Over the last few years, the industry has seen an unprecedented number of organizations move their IT infrastructure either partly or fully into the cloud – yet over the last 12 months the news has been littered with high-profile outages and security incidents at major cloud and software providers.
Some of the biggest names in IT have experienced issues recently, with household names being taken offline as a result of both malicious attacks and unintentional glitches and errors. This has resulted in increasing regulatory and reputational risk as well as some noise across the industry that businesses are becoming too reliant on certain service providers.
Now, the debate rages: should organizations look to move away from the cloud in order to reinforce trust and resilience? This re-assessment of risk concentration is seeing some moves – and here, Procurri talks through what we’ve experienced thus far.
Why did companies move to cloud computing to begin with?
The original logic for organizations moving their IT infrastructure from on-prem services to cloud-based facilities was that the traditional services simply weren’t keeping up with rapid growth. As a modern alternative, cloud services offered:
- Speed
- Scalability
- Reduced internal infrastructure management
- Faster innovation cycles
- Global availability.
For most, this offered a great way for businesses to grow (or fluctuate) their demand and served exactly that – until the need for control and availability became as important as speed.
What’s changed to the risk landscape for cloud?
As so many businesses have moved to cloud services, one of the most common areas of risk is the concentration of services. With so many companies relying on the same few hyperscalers, a single outage or attack can impact entire industries all at once – and it only takes one household name to be affected to make the news.
It’s estimated that up to 94% of enterprise services worldwide now rely on one of the major cloud providers; AWS (Amazon Web Services), Google Cloud or Microsoft Cloud; for hosting, delivery or the storage of data. These three largest providers control almost 65% of the global market – a major monopoly. From August 2024 to August 2025, the three experienced over 100 service outages, the largest of which was a 15-hour disruption for AWS that affected over 4 million end users.
Furthermore, security and supply-chain attacks can prove a larger risk to cloud setups; as there’s usually considerably more organizations affected. Even well-secured customers can be compromised via trusted vendors, and this simply doesn’t compare with on-prem services that reduce exposure to third-party attack vectors.
While such big names in the industry are under pressure to meet regulatory standards, it should also be noted that audits are simpler and data locality requirements can be met easier with on-prem configurations.
On a locality note, there is also growing attention within the tech industry to the theory that European businesses are becoming too dependent on North American providers. An article in the Wall Street Journal put forward the possibility of White House executive orders cutting off Europe’s access to data centres or email software that businesses and governments need to function – and in such a tumultuous time in geo-politics, this has struck many as a big risk. Cloud providers too aren’t shying away from this notion, with AWS launching a ‘European Sovereign Cloud’ in January.
What does bringing apps ‘back on-prem’ involve?
For the most part, the moves we’re seeing in the industry to on-prem are focused on optimization rather than regression from tech – and most of what we see is the introduction of hybrid architectures as opposed to entire relocations.
Rather than entirely abandoning cloud setups, many organizations are selectively repatriating their high-risk or mission-critical workloads; with core systems moving to on-prem but edge and bust workloads remaining in the cloud. Private infrastructure is beneficial in many ways for the most important and sensitive workloads and provides a higher degree of control and availability for the business themselves.
What are the benefits of moving from cloud to on-prem?
There are pros and cons to the choice of moving workloads out of the cloud, and it’s critical that businesses make an informed decision to ensure its appropriateness for their configurations.
Using on-prem setups for critical systems provides organizations with greater control and isolation, as well as reducing their dependency on third party suppliers. This allows for predictable performance and easy budgetary overview for steady workloads.
However, this isn’t to say that on-prem is perfect – even if it does feel a little like a move back to the ‘status quo’. On-prem configurations require a higher upfront investment than cloud, and a business must have or recruit staff with the necessary skills to manage the service. Internal operations must be mature and steady, or it’s unlikely that the business will be able to manage their configuration well enough for guaranteed performance.
The bottom line? Resilience isn’t free. Whether opting for cloud, on-prem, or hybrid configurations, organizations must invest their money, time and resources into decent management and security.
Wie kann Procurri helfen?
Procurri has long supported organizations managing a variety of configurations. Whether or not you’re choosing to head ‘back on-prem’ with some or all workloads, our expert teams can help design and manage your structure.
Hardware wise, our solutions empower businesses to maximize the value of their pre-owned IT equipment. Procurri’s vast network of buyers and global market reach combined with our rigorous testing and certification processes, ensure that only the highest quality hardware is made available to buyers, providing them with reliable and cost-effective solutions for their IT needs. It may not be as expensive as you expect to set up again!
What’s more, Procurri’s Third Party Maintenance allows organizations to break the cycle of constant upgrading and repurchasing to sustainably extend the life of their IT assets and provide more affordable and flexible maintenance options once the OEM’s warranty period expires.
Unsure of your next move or if the cloud is too risky for your organization’s needs? Get in touch with an expert member of the Procurri team today and let’s talk through your options.
