Cloud repatriation: How to take back control

The cost benefit of migrating to cloud can be overestimated for pure lift and shift migrations. To realise the cost benefits the implementation often requires application modernisation to make use of cloud–native services. Although the ease of provisioning and scaling cloud resources is an obvious benefit, it can lead to high costs due to decentralised provisioning led by application teams, and lack of proper controls to limit sprawl. Moving all workloads to the cloud can sometimes increase spending if not properly controlled. 

The IDC Survey Cloud Trends in Europe survey 2023 showed a declining trend in complete public cloud migration, with 71% of respondents planning partial or full repatriation. The most common reasons for repatriating workloads are to reduce costs, improve performance and increase security. 

Google Cloud’s Open Infrastructure Cloud can be used to implement the desired hybrid model. Google Cloud believes that openness and flexibility are essential for cloud computing. They want to give customers the choice to run their workloads where and how they want, and to retain control over their infrastructure and data. Google Cloud’s Open Infrastructure Cloud initiative commits Google to providing services that give their customers choice and flexibility. It provides customers with more control and security over their infrastructure and security, and offers greater openness and interoperability. 

Google Cloud’s Open Infrastructure Cloud is a collection of services that enable customers to run their workloads on Google’s infrastructure, but with the flexibility to choose where and how they run.

This includes the ability to run workloads on-premise, in multiple public clouds, or at the edge. 

Many financial services organisations have turned to using Google Cloud Open Infrastructure Cloud to run their mission-critical applications in a highly secure environment, retain control over their data and meet strict regulatory compliance requirements. 

Google Cloud Anthos is a hybrid and multicloud platform that enables customers to run their workloads on Google Cloud, on-premise, and in other clouds. It provides a consistent environment for managing and deploying workloads across all environments, making it easier to move workloads between clouds. 

Google Cloud Anthos clusters on bare metal (GKE on bare metal), a component of Google Distributed Cloud Virtual (GKE on Google Distributed Cloud), is software that brings Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) to customer on-premise data centres. With Anthos clusters on bare metal, customers can create, manage and upgrade Kubernetes clusters on their own hardware in their own datacentres. 

Anthos clusters on bare metal includes Anthos VM Runtime, which lets customers run virtual machines (VMs) on top of Kubernetes in the same way that they run containers. With Anthos VM Runtime, customers can run existing VM-based workloads simultaneously, as they also develop and run new container-based applications. 

1. Assessment: Assess the current cloud hosted workloads to identify those that need to be repatriated, based on factors such as: cost benefit, performance, security, integration and interdependencies, disaster recovery, operational resilience, and regulatory compliance. 
2. Planning: Once the workloads have been identified, a plan must be developed. This must include a timeline, budget, and resource planning. 
3. Migration: First migrate any non-production environments that are representative of the production environment hosted in the cloud. For example, migrate staging and / or performance to the on-premise environment and test sufficiently to determine that the predicted repatriation benefits are realised. Once satisfied that all functional and non-functional requirements have been met, proceed to migrating the production workloads. 
4. Testing: Once the workloads have been migrated, test and test again to verify that they are functioning properly. Include operational resilience, monitoring & logging platforms, DevOps tooling, disaster recovery and business continuity plans. 
5. Support: Once the workloads have been repatriated to the on-premise environment the workloads need to be supported. This will include monitoring, troubleshooting, and maintenance. Ensure that support staff have the tools and training to support the repatriated workloads. 

GFT is working with several of its financial services customers to implement Google Anthos to solve the hybrid cloud challenge. Please feel free to contact our specialists via our Google Cloud partner page to discuss your hybrid challenges and how GFT can help you achieve success.