Beyond Cloud Repatriation: Why Workload Placement Unlocks IT Value

It’s time to think bigger than cloud repatriation and consider whether your workload placement strategy provides the most value to your organization.

By now you’ve probably heard both sides of the story: The public cloud evangelists who shared how they unlocked agility and increased innovation, and the private cloud pundits who spoke of botched migrations, runaway costs and confusing public cloud bills.

Here’s an uncomfortable truth: Both sides are right.

There’s no question the public cloud has delivered in terms of scalability, resource-rich environments, and agile development practices. Gartner estimates worldwide public cloud spend will be up 18% in 2023 to nearly $600 billion.

Yet at the same time, recent headlines suggest organizations are beginning to question the public cloud’s cost benefit ratio. In a 2021 article, for example, Andreessen Horowitz made waves estimating a $100 billion market value gap across the top 50 cloud-invested public software companies precisely due to public cloud usage impacting their margins.

All of this has led us here: to conversations around cloud repatriation. A short recap: if you are in the public cloud, you might be asking yourself would it be cheaper to repatriate some or all my workloads back on premises? For some, the answer is yes. David Hansson wrote a fascinating blog post about why 37Signals was leaving the cloud. Efim Mirochnik wrote an equally fascinating article about how Ahrefs saved $400 million largely avoiding it in the first place.

But to (public) cloud or not cloud—is this even the right question? The term “cloud repatriation” suggests a binary decision—you put your business somewhere and then you decided to move it somewhere else.

What if the story is not an “or” but an “and”?

What if stories about cloud repatriation aren’t necessarily about repatriation at all—rather part of a strategy in which you place workloads to unlock the best performance with the most value?

A world like that comes with a few advantages. Here are a few to consider:

1. Your costs are lower and more predictable

Some workloads need the availability and rapid scalability the public cloud offers. But many don’t. If you run reliable, steady state applications—think backend data processing—should you be paying a premium for scalable resources you’re unlikely to ever need? In such scenarios, it only makes sense move them out of the public cloud. On the other hand, workloads with lots of variable or unpredictable usage? You might be better off in the public cloud from a resource and availability standpoint. But keep in mind if your usage is fluctuating, so are your cloud bills.

2. You can optimize your existing resources

There’s no simpler way to say it: If you own it, you control it.

It’s probable you already own some amount of hardware. Which means if you have heavy investments in the public cloud, you might be paying a premium for things you could—maybe even should—be doing under your own roof.

If you’ve already invested in on-premises infrastructure, you might ask yourself: How do I get the most from those investments while still taking advantage of everything the public cloud has to offer? This can mean optimizing existing hardware investments and running workloads in locations that offer the best cost-per-performance ratios. It might also mean optimizing existing capacity to avoid the costs associated with underutilized or over-provisioned resources. This is where taking advantage of solutions that allow you to apply consistency across environments can help. With a consistent experience and toolset across your on-premises and cloud environments, you can ensure you’re making the most of your resources no matter where you’re operating.

3. You’ll have fewer data transfer fees

Moving data and workloads from cloud to cloud is a little like airline travel: if you do it a lot, it’ll cost you. Data transfer fees turn out to be pretty good business for some public cloud providers, who may charge you up to 80 times above cost for the privilege to move your data. And let’s not forget public clouds charge you every time you access your data, so the more valuable it is to you, the more you pay to use it.

This is where repatriating can help. Bringing your data back on premises gives you the most control over it and allows you to sidestep unexpected surprises such as data egress fees. Plus you can make strategic decisions such as housing data in a colocation facility which gives you access to public cloud services without the need to store it there.

4. You worry less about lock-in

Talk to most IT organizations in the public cloud and they’ll frequently mention one gripe: It’s easy to get in, but not so easy to get out. Simply put, when you’re heavily invested in a particular public cloud you’re increasingly locked into that provider’s ecosystem—their tools, their services and their platform. Architecting for portability and running workloads wherever it makes sense for your business gives you more freedom to plan for your future. You have more control and flexibility to choose the hardware, software, and services that meet your needs and are less beholden to prices imposed (or raised) on you by others.

Related: What is Cloud Repatriation in a Multicloud Strategy?

Smarter workload placement unlocks business value

Of course, there are many situations where repatriating workloads may not be the right solution. A mix of on-premises and cloud infrastructure will be the right choice for most organizations, but only you will know what proportions are right for you.

So where do you go from here? Seek out solutions that allow you to apply a consistent cloud experience across your IT landscape, with the maximum freedom to run workloads where they perform best and are most cost effective for you. It’s one of the reasons we designed our Dell APEX portfolio of multicloud and as-a-Service offerings the way we did—so you can run what you want, where you want, the way you want.

Here’s where you can learn more about Dell APEX.

Keep Reading: Cloud Repatriation Without Trade-offs on Ease and Agility