As public cloud spending surges toward the trillions, Tony Healy, Chief Information and Technology Officer at Six Degrees, explains why enterprises are quietly shifting critical workloads back to private cloud for greater control, compliance and predictability.
Public cloud adoption continues to grow at a rapid pace, and in 2025 it is a fundamental component of the digital transformation strategies of businesses worldwide.
Indeed, Gartner forecasts that worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services will reach $723 billion this year, underlining just how central these platforms have become.
Everywhere you look, the numbers are impressive. A 2024 Goldman Sachs study claims that cloud computing sales are expected to rise to $2 trillion by the end of the decade, driven by factors such as digital transformation and AI adoption.
Given this momentum many might question private cloud’s relevance, assuming it will soon be edged out of business infrastructure altogether. However, despite the maturity and scale of the hyperscale market, private cloud still holds a significant place in modern IT environments and is actually experiencing a strong revival.
In fact, recent research reveals that over half of IT leaders (53%) now identify private cloud as their top priority for developing new workloads, and nearly 70% are considering, or already undertaking, workload repatriation from public to private environments.
Control, compliance and security
So, where is this demand coming from? For many organisations, the most compelling reason to invest in or retain private cloud relates to the level of control it affords. A big part of the motivation for this is that data sovereignty is no longer just a technical consideration but a legal requirement, with frameworks such as GDPR, FCA guidelines, and sector-specific mandates demanding clarity on where data resides and how it is managed.
Private cloud environments provide that certainty. They allow businesses to enforce their own data residency policies, apply tailored governance frameworks, and maintain visibility over access rights. In contrast to multi-tenant public cloud platforms, private cloud enables organisations to configure infrastructure in line with specific compliance obligations.
It goes without saying that security is another crucial factor. While public cloud providers deliver robust and proven levels of protection, organisations handling sensitive or regulated workloads often prefer the additional assurance of private infrastructure. In particular, by maintaining direct control over configuration and policy enforcement, they can match their cloud infrastructure with broader risk management strategies and, in the process, reduce exposure to external threats.
Performance and cost predictability
Many private cloud users also value its performance and cost predictability, with access to dedicated resources helping to avoid the latency and contention issues that can affect multi-tenant public environments. For workloads that demand consistent throughput or low-latency performance, this level of predictability is hard to replicate elsewhere.
Turning to resilience, while public cloud outages may not be particularly frequent, the sheer scale of these services means that, when they do occur, the impact can be acute. In contrast, private cloud environments give organisations more direct control over infrastructure priorities such as uptime, service levels and recovery planning, helping to mitigate the risk of extended disruption.
In addition, even though the flexibility of public cloud pricing has always been a significant advantage, its unpredictability is now creating problems for many. Costs can escalate due to unplanned spikes in usage or the addition of unforeseen charges, such as data egress which can be extremely expensive. By contrast, private cloud offers stable and transparent pricing models that align more closely with steady workloads, giving organisations a clearer view of their long-term commitments.
Hybrid integration and cloud readiness
When considering these various issues, it’s important to remember that public and private clouds are far from mutually exclusive. The resurgence of private cloud is not about replacing public platforms but about creating the right mix of environments to meet different needs. For most organisations, the reality is hybrid: some workloads benefit from the elasticity of public cloud, while others require the control, stability and compliance that private cloud infrastructure provides.
In particular, a hybrid approach also allows for more flexible workload placement. For example, private cloud often acts as the primary environment, with public platforms used selectively for functions such as bursting during periods of high demand or supporting disaster recovery strategies. By operating in this way, organisations can deliver a win-win whereby the scalability of hyperscale platforms is achieved alongside the assurance of private infrastructure.
Private cloud is also an excellent option for workloads that are not yet cloud-native. Organisations reliant on legacy applications will know they can be difficult to replatform quickly, yet still need to benefit from modernisation. Hosting them in a private cloud provides a pragmatic bridge, enabling virtualisation and incremental transformation without the disruption of an immediate move to public cloud. Ultimately, whichever way the infrastructure priorities lie, private cloud seems certain to become more deeply integrated in the years ahead.
