New independent research commissioned by Node4 reveals 97% of mid-market companies plan to migrate some workloads out of their public cloud environments over the next 12 months. However, far from signalling the end of public cloud, this trend reflects a more targeted and pragmatic approach, where organisations optimise location and workload in environments that work best for their specific needs. In this context, it’s notable that only 5% intend to repatriate all their applications. The majority (49%) plan to remove a few specific applications and workloads. 

“Mid-market organisations are entering a new phase of cloud strategy, one defined by pragmatism, not dogma,” said Richard Moseley, CEO, Node4. “Most still have a substantial footprint of on-premises infrastructure and applications running in the public cloud. This demonstrates a clear preference for hybrid environments and a shift from cloud-first to cloud-appropriate. We believe this will be the mid-market’s default setting for the foreseeable future.”  

According to ‘Unlocking Growth in the Mid-Market: The Node4 Report’, performance considerations top the list of reasons for migrating selected applications away from public cloud environments and are due to:  

Lift and shift workloads that were unsuited to the public cloud

Applications that have been modernised but aren’t performing as expected 

User frustrations from SaaS application latency