While we’ve been skeptical about repatriation as a notable movement, anecdotal evidence suggests that it is happening in certain pockets. Even though we still don’t see cloud repatriation broadly showing in the numbers, certain examples have caught our attention. In addition, the potential impact of AI raises some interesting questions about where infrastructure should be physically located and causes us to revisit our premise that repatriation is an isolated and negligible trend. 

In this Breaking Analysis we look at a number of sources, including the experiences of 37signals, which has documented its departure from public clouds. We’ll also examine the relationship between repatriation and SRE Ops skill sets. As always we’ll look at survey data from our partners at ETR, a recent FinOps study published by Vega Cloud and revisit the Cloud Repatriation Index, which we believe is breaking a three-year trend.

The cost of cloud, a Trillion Dollar Paradox: https://a16z.com/2021/05/27/cost-of-cloud-paradox-market-cap-cloud-lifecycle-scale-growth-repatriation-optimization/

IDC Repatriation Report: https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/a76227cd-a662-4f4e-9b26-1a6fdca9f0fd/downloads/1cnptggfe_976725.pdf

The connection between cloud repatriation and SRE Ops by Lori MacVittie: https://devops.com/the-curious-connection-between-cloud-repatriation-and-sre-ops/#disqus_thread

Snowflake March 2023 10K: Read the notes! https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001640147/ba7caf53-f000-4fc0-b8a3-ef379d21b99d.pdf

Why we’re leaving the cloud (37signals) https://world.hey.com/dhh/why-we-re-leaving-the-cloud-654b47e0

Sovereign clouds (37signals): https://world.hey.com/dhh/sovereign-clouds-661eb5e4

The Platformanomics Repatriation Index: https://www.platformonomics.com/2022/11/introducing-the-platformonomics-repatriation-index/

Vega Cloud Optimization Report: https://www.vegacloud.io/_files/ugd/e67781_49124f7bd58d4b358ddd0845aac33cff.pdf

The cost of cloud, a Trillion Dollar Paradox: https://a16z.com/2021/05/27/cost-of-cloud-paradox-market-cap-cloud-lifecycle-scale-growth-repatriation-optimization/

The true cost of scale out file storage [The Cloudcast Podcast] https://www.thecloudcast.net/2023/03/scale-out-cloud-storage.html