To Cloud or not to Cloud. That is the question.
Less than 10 years ago I remember meeting many clients who scoffed at the idea that Microsoft Teams would be a cloud based solution, and that they would not be able to host their own environments.
The large pharmaceutical and finance houses I was talking to at the time had invested huge amounts in their own networks, so their position was understandable. The idea of simply using the internet seemed like a step back. And of course in many ways it was. Security, resilience, scaleability, and long term cost of these cloud solutions were all major concerns.
But come the pandemic, most big orgs embraced cloud with a vengeance. Realistically they had little choice. With so many people working from home, empty offices and networks designed for a different world, where people primarily came to a central office, they simply needed to embrace it.
Fast forward to 2025 and I’m beginning to witness what I think is a bit of a swing back toward on-prem solutions. Now to be clear I’m not suggesting the likes of Zoom, Webex or Microsoft Teams are in trouble, far from it. But I do see clients who are moving toward more of a hybrid world where some communication is brought back inside the walls of organizations. Security, geo political risk, AI scrapping and the ever rising cost of Cloud solutions are beginning to rise in importance to the point where reshoring some of these activities are becoming strategically important.
The questions I have for my readers are.
Am I only seeing this because I’m looking, or is this real?
Do developments such as Azure and AWS sovereign in country solutions change the dynamic, or mitigate clients risk assessments?
If you are seeing clients moving in this direction, do you have a sense of what type of calls, or what percentage of traffic would be reshored?
What are the reasons cited by clients for looking to reshore, or reasons not too?
What challenges around reshoring are top of mind for clients?
What have I missed that should be covered?
How much of this is going on beyond communications solutions?
Please feel free to email me, or send me a message through Linkedin if you’d prefer not to comment publicly on this. I promise to keep your comments private. Ideally I'd like to make this an interesting thread for conversation.
Assuming I get some feedback on this topic, I’d like to dig into some detail over the coming months. So please stay tuned for more.
About the Author
Simon Dudley is a chump. A man who believes in paying taxes, waiting his turn, the rule of law, being a decent human being. He writes a lot about strategy, technology, society, education, business, Excession Events and science.
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