Cloud repatriation means moving workloads from public cloud back to on-premise or private infrastructure. Rising costs, data sovereignty and regulation are leading many UK businesses to rethink a cloud-first approach, usually workload by workload rather than all at once.
Fortuna Data has designed and supplied on-premise infrastructure for UK businesses since 1994, and can help you work out what should move and what should stay.
Sources: Barclays CIO Survey (H1 2024), reported by RCR Wireless; VMware Private Cloud Outlook 2025 (1,800 IT leaders); IDC, reported by The Register (October 2024).
Cloud repatriation is moving applications, data or workloads out of a public cloud such as AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud, and back to on-premise infrastructure, a private cloud or a colocation facility.
It is not giving up on cloud. It is placing each workload where it works best on cost, performance and compliance. For most organisations the result is a hybrid mix, with some workloads on-premise and some in the cloud.
Steady workloads that have run in the cloud for years can cost more than expected once storage growth, egress fees and data transfer charges add up. IDC found about half of cloud buyers spent more on cloud than they expected in 2023.
UK GDPR and sector rules require you to show where data is held and who can access it. Some organisations also weigh up the reach of the US CLOUD Act when data is held by US-owned providers.
Financial services, healthcare, legal and public sector organisations face growing obligations around data residency, audit trails and evidence of control.
AI inferencing, high-performance computing and latency-sensitive applications can run more predictably on local hardware than on shared cloud infrastructure.
Broadcom's changes to VMware licensing led many organisations to review their infrastructure dependencies and look at more flexible options.
High-profile UK cyber attacks have led many boards to ask where their data lives and whether they can evidence how it is protected.
Tell us what you run in the cloud today, and we will help you work out which workloads would cost less or be easier to control on-premise.
Repatriation is rarely all or nothing. IDC reports that production data and backup and disaster recovery are among the most commonly repatriated parts of workloads.
An honest assessment will also show workloads that belong in the cloud:
List every workload in the cloud with its cost, performance, data residency and regulatory needs. Many organisations find spend on workloads they had forgotten about.
Use the criteria above and start with workloads where the cost or compliance case for on-premise is strongest.
Specify the servers, storage and networking, and choose between traditional 3-tier and hyper-converged infrastructure. See 3-tier vs HCI.
Move lower-risk workloads first, then business-critical systems. Keep the option to fail back to the cloud until the new environment is proven.
Make sure backup, disaster recovery and security monitoring are ready before you switch off cloud resources. See backup vs disaster recovery and our managed SOC.
We can help at every stage: reviewing your cloud estate, specifying the on-premise infrastructure, supplying and deploying the hardware and software, and designing backup, disaster recovery and security into the new environment from the start.
We supply enterprise storage from IBM, Qualstar and DataCore, servers from Lenovo and Fsas Technologies (formerly Fujitsu), and hyper-converged infrastructure. We will also tell you where the cloud is still the right answer.
Moving workloads or data from a public cloud back to on-premise infrastructure, a private cloud or a colocation facility.
Partial repatriation is common. A Barclays CIO survey found 83% of enterprise CIOs planned to move some workloads back, while IDC reports only 8–9% of companies plan to move everything back.
It can be for steady, predictable workloads and large amounts of storage, especially where egress and retrieval fees apply. It depends on the workload, so compare costs for each one.
Start with lower-risk, steady workloads where the cost or compliance case is clear, such as backup, archive or large data sets.
No. Most organisations end up with a hybrid mix, keeping some workloads in the cloud and moving others on-premise.
Yes. We can review what you run in the cloud, recommend what to move and supply the on-premise infrastructure, with a clear UK quote.
Tell us what you run in the cloud and we will give you an honest comparison, including where the cloud remains the right choice.
Prefer email? Write to solutions@fortunadata.com
