Hybrid hosting now preferred choice for IT leaders

The report, commissioned by Asanti, one of the UK’s leading colocation data centre providers, and conducted by VansonBourne, indicates that many organisations now view blending public cloud with on-premise solutions as the optimal approach to managing IT infrastructure.

Over the last decade, many organisations adopted a cloud-first approach, however as the research findings reveal the realisation that a hybrid strategy, combining on-premise and cloud, would have helped to avoid some of the critical challenges shared in the report. The research, which surveyed 100 senior IT decision makers across public and private sectors in the UK, revealed key drivers for this change in thinking:

Unexpected costs: 77% of respondents reported that operating costs in the public cloud were higher than anticipated, with 63% stating these costs exceeded those of their previous non-public cloud models.

Security and compliance concerns: Ensuring security and meeting regulatory compliance proved challenging for 62% of organisations. As a result, many are reconsidering the public cloud for their critical and sensitive data.

Prolonged migration times: 98% said that they faced difficulties during their migration to the public cloud with more than half (57%) reporting that the move to public cloud took longer than expected, often leading to disruptions in business operations and escalating costs.

These challenges have led to widespread repatriation of applications from public cloud platforms, with a staggering 91% of those surveyed reporting that they are now moving applications back to on-premise or colocation data centres. Performance issues, downtime, and the need for more control over infrastructure are additional reasons for this shift. An over-reliance on support from public cloud providers, cited by 60% of respondents as their number one resource for migration planning, may played contributed to these issues.

Other significant findings related to public cloud migrations include:

47% experienced service downtime and business interruptions during their public cloud migrations.

44% indicated a need to upskill internal teams to manage and optimise public cloud infrastructure.

38% noted performance degradation after migrating to the public cloud, with many finding cloud resources insufficient to meet their performance expectations.

31% faced application compatibility issues, complicating their IT integration efforts.

Stewart Laing, CEO of Asanti, commented: “With such a high percentage of organisations bringing applications back to on-premise or colocation data centres, you have to wonder – what exactly were cloud providers promising when they sold these packages? It's clear now that defaulting to a cloud-first strategy may not be the best approach. We strongly encourage IT decision makers and business leaders to adopt a business-centric view, focusing on current and future needs to determine the most appropriate hosting model, rather than starting with a predefined solution and attempting to fit the business around it."

The report also highlighted a growing focus on AI applications with 52% of organisations stating that the adoption of AI within their business would require a change to their public cloud strategy, with on-premise and/or in-house IT infrastructure (colocation)) preferred to public cloud. This approach will enable businesses to feel assured that they are operating within a stable and secure environment for sensitive workloads.