Cloud Repatriation: Meaning and Reasons
A-to-Zerto Glossary of Terms
Overview
Cloud repatriation is a term used to describe a trend about workloads being moved from the public cloud back to on-premises or other cloud platforms. While this trend is gaining momentum that doesn't mean organizations are leaving in troves. It is more about re-alignment.
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What Is the Meaning of Cloud Repatriation?
Cloud repatriation refers to the migration of workloads from public cloud environments back to on-premises data centers or other cloud platforms. This shift can be driven by a variety of factors including cost, security, performance, compliance, or strategic changes in business operations.
As organizations grow and their needs evolve, the agility to adapt their IT infrastructure is crucial. Cloud repatriation offers the flexibility to realign IT resources and strategies effectively.
Mastering the Art of Cloud Repatriation
Cloud Repatriation vs Cloud Migration vs Cloud Optimization
Cloud repatriation, cloud migration, and cloud optimization are interconnected yet distinct strategies within IT infrastructure management.
- Cloud Repatriation involves moving workloads from the cloud back to on-premises or to a different cloud environment, driven by factors like cost, security, or compliance.
- Cloud Migration is the process of moving workloads from on-premises environments to the cloud, often motivated by the desire for scalability, flexibility, and reduced maintenance.
- Cloud Optimization focuses on improving the efficiency and performance of cloud resources to maximize value and minimize costs, ensuring the best possible configuration of cloud services for specific workloads.
Understanding these differences helps organizations make informed decisions about their IT strategies, balancing the benefits and challenges of each approach.
Is Cloud Repatriation a Trend?
Articles on the topic of cloud repatriation are not new. This has been happening for quite some time. These blog posts or articles from Block & Files (2018), Mindsight (2019), TechTarget (2019), ComputerWeekly (2021), and analyst reports from IDC (2018) and Gartner (2019) are all proof of that.
The difference now is that many organizations have been using the cloud for quite some time, over multiple types of deployments and for various use cases. So, there is more awareness, collective knowledge and a better understanding about the pros and cons of public cloud deployments and what they really mean for organizations and IT teams.
The trend, if any, is more about organizations reassessing their infrastructure strategy by integrating all the learnings, internally and externally driven, on the short and long-term implications of public cloud deployments and taking some types of corrective actions.
Key Reasons behind Cloud Repatriation
There may be many reasons behind a repatriation decision. Sometimes there is one driver, other times it is a combination. Let’s review some of the most common reasons that usually trigger the decision to go down the repatriation path.
a. Security
Security concerns are a significant driver for cloud repatriation. Many organizations feel more secure with their data in on-premises environments where they have direct control over security measures. The ability to enforce stringent security protocols and mitigate risks more effectively can be a compelling reason to bring workloads back in-house.
b. Cost Management
While the cloud offers scalability and flexibility, it can also lead to unpredictable and sometimes exorbitant costs. Organizations often repatriate workloads to manage expenses more predictably and to avoid the high costs associated with public cloud services. On-premises infrastructure can provide a more stable and manageable cost structure.
c. Performance and Latency
For some applications, especially those requiring low latency and high performance, the cloud might not deliver the desired results. Repatriating workloads can enhance performance by reducing latency and improving the overall user experience through better proximity of data and applications.
d. Data Sovereignty and Regulatory Compliance
Compliance with data sovereignty laws and regulations is a critical consideration. Certain industries and regions have strict data governance requirements that mandate where data can be stored and processed. Cloud repatriation helps organizations comply with these regulations by ensuring data is stored in specified locations.
e. Complexity and Vendor Lock-in
Managing multiple cloud environments can introduce significant complexity. Additionally, organizations may seek to avoid vendor lock-in, where they become overly dependent on a single cloud provider. Repatriation offers the flexibility to use multiple vendors or revert to on-premises solutions, thus mitigating the risks associated with vendor dependency.
Zerto – The Cloud Repatriation Tool
Regardless of where you choose to host your workloads, Zerto provides the necessary tools for seamless migration. Zerto is renowned for its capability in workload mobility, ensuring that your virtual instances can move freely between environments.
Utilizing Zerto’s journal-based replication and recovery, organizations can efficiently repatriate workloads from public cloud providers like Microsoft Azure and AWS.
Move Your Data from Anywhere, to Anywhere with Zerto
Workload Mobility with Zerto
Frequently Asked Questions
No, cloud repatriation doesn’t mean an organization completely stops using any public cloud computing and services and moves everything back to its own infrastructure.
First, companies that can do that are not the majority due to the resources, expertise and time involved in such an effort.
Second, the re-alignment needed may mean only some workloads must be moved off the public cloud. This very often leads organizations to move from a public cloud only model to a hybrid and multi-cloud approach, involving on-premises infrastructure, private cloud, and multiple cloud providers, public or not.
Cloud repatriation may in the end only be part of how IT organizations and infrastructures evolve over time.
In the early days, some organizations may have rushed to the cloud —because everybody was doing it—without a clear plan nor considering what really was fit for the cloud. Some of today’s re-alignment is due to that reason. But there is more to it.
Nowadays, IT leaders need to think about how their infrastructure may have to adjust in the future and build some flexibility about how it can evolve. That means building some capabilities that allow to move workloads and data around with whatever model or approach that makes the most sense for any particular use case, or situation.
AI is a prime example. On their AI journey, many organizations may start running most of their AI workloads in the public cloud, and as they learn and master their approach to AI, may decide at one point in the future to repatriate some workloads back in-house (predictable and stable ones, running all the time) while keeping others in the cloud (training models for instance that run from time to time and require huge amount of resources).
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