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IT Strategy

What’s Driving Cloud Repatriation in 2026?

Something interesting is happening in IT departments right now. The same leaders who spent years migrating workloads to the cloud are quietly moving some of them back.

Not all of them. And, I’m not tyring to say that businesses are now rejecting the cloud or anything like that.

However, there’s a growing push for “Cloud Repatriation” because the math stopped working for certain workloads and the governance requirements changed faster than anyone expected.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, let’s quickly define it.

What is cloud repatriation? Cloud repatriation is the process of moving applications, data, or workloads out of a public cloud environment (like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud) and back to on-premise infrastructure or a private cloud. It’s rarely a full cloud exit. Most often, it’s a targeted move of specific workloads where the cost, performance, or compliance profile makes more sense outside the public cloud.

If you’re an IT director or CIO watching your cloud bills climb past projections every quarter, you’ve probably at least considered it. Cloud repatriation is a strategic shift happening across industries. Let’s get into what’s driving it, why AI is accelerating the trend, and how to evaluate what belongs where in your own environment.

What software should NOT be SaaS?

What types of business software should NOT be used on a SaaS model?

That’s something I’ve been thinking about lately as I read more and more cases of rising SaaS costs. The fact is, most businesses are paying more for their SaaS tools than they were last year. Same tools and users, just a bigger bill. 

73% of SaaS companies raised prices in 2025, averaging 14.2% increases. SaaS inflation is running at roughly five times the general rate. CIOs now spend about 9% of their IT budget just absorbing price hikes on software they already have. According to Zylo’s 2025 SaaS Management Index, SaaS spending per employee hit $4,830 last year, up 21.9% from the year before.

For mid-market companies, per-employee spend jumped 40%. Gartner estimates 25% of all SaaS spend is wasted or underutilized. And 78% of CFOs say they’ve been blindsided by hidden fees or price hikes baked into their contracts.

The vendors aren’t subtle about this anymore. A few examples from the last two years:

7 web application development challenges in 2024 (and a solution)

Summary: As technology evolves at breakneck speed, it brings new opportunities and challenges to web application development. If businesses want to create lasting, successful web applications, they must address these challenges.

Let’s talk about web applications. I know it’s a vague term, so I’ll quickly define it for the sake of clarity.

Scalability, Reliability, and Cost Savings: The Benefits of Cloud Computing for Software Development

Cloud computing has revolutionized the way software is developed, deployed, and managed, providing businesses with the ability to build and launch applications that can handle the demands of modern users. With its three primary benefits of scalability, reliability, and cost savings, cloud computing has made it easier than ever for businesses to develop software quickly and efficiently.

This article explores how cloud computing can benefit software development and how companies can leverage it to streamline operations. The ability to scale up or down resources on demand, the highly available and fault-tolerant infrastructure, and the pay-as-you-go cloud computing model have all transformed traditional software development into a faster, more efficient, and cost-effective process.