The Cloud Back-Flip

Not everyone who walks away from the queue of a big roller-coaster is faint-hearted. Sometimes, one just knows what suits one best

- Pratima H

It was many years back when we first even heard of the concept – migrating away from a public Cloud. Back then this was ventured boldly by Dropbox. And then we heard of it again only in 2022 when Basecamp maker 37signals attempted a Cloud repatriation too. Turns out, it has already saved about $2 million in its first ‘cloud-clean year’. These companies, apparently, saved not just on Cloud bills but also on rack capacity, expensive storage and hidden costs. Recently enough, a bank did the step-down as well – when Cloud struggled with latency as well as the requirements of the Data Protection Act and the Central Bank regulations in the region of Africa.

If these sound like one-off cases, consider what some reports are sniffing out. In the IDC’s Cloud Pulse 4Q 2023 survey, it was observed that close to half of cloud buyers spent more on cloud than they expected in 2023, and 59 per cent have anticipated similar overruns in 2024. Companies are struggling to make accurate cost forecasts because of the complexities of cloud environments, and unforeseen external influences along with increasing costs of third-party services, energy costs, and new technologies like GenAI. While the number is still small (with only eight to nine per cent of companies planning full workload repatriation in the IDC’s Server and Storage Workloads Survey), the signs are loud and clear.

As organizations mature and optimize their usage, these issues will likely diminish and no longer serve as significant reasons for repatriation in the medium to long term. - Vishal Kamani Cloud Business Head, Kyndryl India