For years, cloud-first strategies have dominated the enterprise IT infrastructure landscape. Hyperscale at all costs was the rallying cry, with the flexibility of cloud-based solutions attracting forward-thinking corporate IT leaders in droves.
In recent years, the narrative has shifted. Some businesses have started to recognize the downsides and tradeoffs of an all-in approach. Alongside public cloud’s renowned flexibility, enterprises are encountering higher-than-expected costs, resiliency concerns—and, at times, security concerns, particularly in tightly regulated industries.
Here at Lightedge, we recognized this trend and have built our company around the idea that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to IT Infrastructure, especially since most enterprises have multiple workloads across multiple cloud platforms.
As enterprises demand more and more from their IT infrastructure, with increased focus on compliance and security against the backdrop of automation and AI, hybrid strategies win every time.
Let’s look at what’s driving these decisions.
The rise of repatriation
In The Register, David Heinemeier Hansson of SaaS company 37 Signals (the company behind project management behemoth Basecamp) reported they could save over $7 million by repatriating workloads.
That’s a sentiment that’s echoing throughout the industry. In fact, Barclays reports that up to 83% of enterprises are planning the repatriation of some workloads. IDC puts the number closer to 70%, but the trend is clear: customers are demanding options.
Enterprises exploring repatriation strategies are looking for:
Agility. No workload is static—and bringing critical components in house provides the infrastructure to support changes organizations need to evolve as demands shift and technology advances.
Cost optimization. Many enterprises have discovered that certain workloads, particularly those with predictable compute requirements, can be more cost-effective to run on-prem.
Security and compliance. As threats increase and privacy regulations become more stringent, businesses need more control over data governance. Repatriation can reduce the risk of breaches and streamline compliance with regulations like GDPR or HIPAA.
Performance. Applications with low-latency requirements will perform better on-prem or in private data centers.
Public cloud continues to grow—and that’s important.
Despite the repatriation trend, public cloud spending continues to grow. Gartner forecasts that worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services will reach $679 billion in 2024, up from $597 billion in 2023. This growth underscores the enduring value of public cloud services for the entire industry.
Hybrid infrastructure clears the way for better solutions.
With all of this in mind, it’s clear that today’s technology challenges demand a balanced, hybrid approach that leverages the best of all worlds, combining on-premise, colocation, private cloud and public cloud environments—and placing all workloads behind one pane of glass.
Hybrid infrastructure solutions bring new levels of flexibility that—despite the promises—single technologies simply can’t deliver. Hybrid enables enterprises to run critical, sensitive workloads on-premise while leveraging the public cloud for more tailored tasks.
Further, companies can manage databases on-prem for security and control and use the cloud for app development, testing, and scaling applications on demand. It truly is the best of all worlds.
In our experience, clients that adopt hybrid infrastructure solutions achieve:
Agility and scalability. The nature of hybrid infrastructure frees businesses from the bounds of traditional platforms, letting them scale workloads to the cloud during peak periods while maintaining control over on-premise systems.
Cost control. Businesses can run stable, predictable workloads on-prem while leveraging the cloud for flexible, variable workloads that may need rapid scaling or additional resources, bringing predictability to IT spend.
A more nuanced approach to security. With mission-critical applications and sensitive data in private infrastructure, businesses can minimize risk and exposure to security vulnerabilities that come with public cloud.
Best of all, a hybrid approach lets businesses adapt more quickly to new technologies and workloads, helping them keep an edge as the landscape continues to change.
The future has been in front of us all along. The future is hybrid.
With traditional “cloud-first” strategies firmly locked into monolithic thinking, it’s time to recognize there’s no single solution for all IT workloads. The shift toward hybrid is not just a trend or the next shiny object.
At Lightedge, the key to our reinvention has been the ability to give our clients access to the industry’s widest range of tools, solutions and platforms. We believe this technology-agnostic approach is the best way, perhaps the only way, to see beyond today’s challenges—and tomorrow’s.
Learn more about Lightedge’s hybrid-first philosophy for ensuring each workload operates where it delivers the most value. Visit: https://www.lightedge.com/hybrid/
[1] The Register.com, Sept. 18, 2023. “37 Signals says cloud repatriation plan has already saved it $1 million”
[2] Channelnomics.com., Aug. 29, 2024. “Breaking Down the 83% Public Cloud Repatriation Number”
[3] Gartner.com, Nov. 13, 2023. “Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Public Cloud End-User Spending to Reach $679 Billion in 2024.”
