A shift back to the private cloud will be helping CIOs better manage their budgets by avoiding unforeseeable costs. In fact, research shows that moving the right workloads to the private cloud delivers median cost savings of 50%. This is the view of President Ntuli, Managing Director for HPE South Africa. A controversial view and contrary to the mood of many of his peers in the industry. He says it will top IT’s agenda this year!

“With South Africa’s economic growth expectations for 2024 sitting at just 1%, it’s safe to say cloud repatriation will be a definitive trend in the year ahead. Local CIOs will no doubt be under strict instruction from their board of directors to keep IT costs predictable and as a result will be looking for greater control over their spend”.

He says that as many businesses have felt the consequences of too quickly migrating to the public cloud without a well-defined strategy in place, similarly there is a danger for CIOs in getting caught up in the growing trend towards cloud repatriation without first developing a robust cloud migration plan.

“Aside from having a clear understanding of business needs and how they impact which workloads should stay in the cloud, and which should be repatriated, CIOs also need to ensure minimal disruption to the business while the transition is taking place.  

CIO must first consider the new energy requirements. The need for a backup generator might seem obvious, as well as latency and connectivity requirements. In the past, I’ve seen some organisations shift workloads between clouds without realising the importance of considering their network infrastructure. When transferring to a hosted data centre, for example, underestimating the need for network technology that delivers high speed internet can impact future projects, resulting in major delays. When app availability is compromised, your business is at risk of losing clients. Think, for example, of the upset caused when banking systems are down – even briefly.

Understanding the need for a different network architecture

The reality is that as you repatriate your workloads, your networking may need some restructuring. Particular attention must be paid to peak periods, when the network will be under the most strain and when there is likely to be the largest number of concurrent users. Rigorous stress testing will be needed to ensure optimal performance. At the same time, the network configurations for public cloud and on premises will differ. This means you’ll need to update them in line with the new architecture as part of the repatriation process. The business’ individual connectivity requirements must be considered as part of a broader cloud migration plan, which can vary significantly. To further complicate matters, there are many different service providers in the market, all advocating their offerings as end-to-end solutions.

For this reason, the first step in successful repatriation is to seek out independent advice. HPE, for example, does this through an approach called Right Mix Advisor, whereby different tools and methodologies are used to help businesses find the optimal mix of cloud solutions as part of a broader hybrid approach.

The need for cloud repatriation is always a strategic decision rather than a technical one. It’s imperative that the planning and execution isn’t driven by IT teams exclusively, but in consultation with other business stakeholders.

The best way to achieve optimal results is by placing careful thought around the ‘why’ behind your choice to shift workloads. In the end, your decision-making should come down to optimising and streamlining resources.

While jumping on the cloud repatriation movement can provide a great way to save money and improve your service delivery, it must be undertaken with a clear understanding of where your business is headed and how the cloud can help it get there. “