It started with a simple question from a customer boardroom.
“What happens if someone cuts the cable between Ireland and the UK?”
It might sound far-fetched at first, but it’s not. In fact, it’s become emblematic of a growing undercurrent in IT conversations across the globe—a cautious re-evaluation of Cloud strategy that some are calling “Cloud repatriation.”
At Lemongrass, we’ve been helping customers modernize and migrate SAP systems to the Cloud for over 15 years. During that time, we’ve seen trends come and go, waves of enthusiasm, spikes in concern. So when I was recently asked if Cloud repatriation—bringing workloads back from the public Cloud—is really happening, my answer was: not yet in any significant numbers. But the conversations are getting louder.
There’s no single reason—rather, it’s a mix of technical, political, and business concerns.
Some of it is about resilience. Enterprises are asking what happens if their operations are all dependent on one hyperscaler, one region, one control plane. While hyperscalers offer multi-region setups and built-in resilience, some organizations still prefer a physical sense of control. In one example, a global customer decided to deploy a Cloud environment in their own data center—not because the Cloud failed them, but because the stakes (and the revenues) were just too high to hand over every layer of control.
Then there’s the security and sovereignty conversation. This goes deeper than firewalls and encryption. For some, it’s about who has access to their data, where that data physically resides, and under whose jurisdiction it falls. Concerns are bubbling up around potential government overreach, access rights, and geopolitical tensions. And it’s not just Europe—an $85 billion Australian company recently opted to localize its infrastructure, not because of poor Cloud performance, but because of sovereignty anxiety.
That question about undersea cables? It wasn’t a metaphor. Customers are thinking about edge scenarios—what happens if war spreads, if political landscapes shift, if the digital world becomes a pawn in real-world tension? These aren’t mass-market concerns yet, but they’re starting to appear on board agendas.
So, is the Cloud in retreat?
No. Not at all. Despite these concerns, we’re still firmly in the era of Cloud adoption. The momentum is still heading towards public Cloud, not away from it. What we are seeing, though, is a pendulum swing—not a reversal. Each swing back is shorter, and the equilibrium is closer to a hybrid world: some data in public Cloud, some in private, some in sovereign-specific setups. It’s not about a mass migration back to on-prem, it’s about optionality. Different industries will land in different places. Defence and government may prioritize sovereignty. A biscuit valve manufacturer? Probably not top of their list.
Here’s where things get interesting for partners.
Cloud repatriation opens up new conversations—but only if you approach it the right way. The worst thing you can do is push a customer into a sovereign or hybrid solution they don’t need. The best thing you can do is help them understand what problem they’re trying to solve, and then guide them through the options.
Because here’s the truth: change always creates work. But not all change creates value. Repatriation might be right for a few. It won’t be right for many.
We’ll continue to see the emergence of new patterns—Cloud in the data centre, sovereign overlays from the hyperscalers, more granular classification of workloads. And we’ll continue to advise customers with a simple lens: what are you trying to solve?
Whether it’s AI, Cloud, or something else entirely, technology decisions should start with a business problem. Otherwise, we risk chasing headlines instead of outcomes.
Repatriation is worth talking about—but let’s keep our feet on the ground while we do.
