FEATURE
It’ s not just one force driving change
The current geopolitical climate has amplified concerns that were already simmering beneath the surface. European businesses are discovering that their cautious instincts about infrastructure dependencies were wellfounded. The regulatory landscape has evolved dramatically, with GDPR setting the template for increasingly stringent data residency requirements across multiple jurisdictions.
Some countries are also beginning to implement stricter data residency laws that force organizations to fundamentally reevaluate where they store sensitive information.
Even beyond political and regulatory pressures lies an increasingly compelling business case for change.
Cloud costs have spiralled beyond many organizations’ expectations, with egress charges creating particularly painful lock-in effects.
Contrary to cloud marketing promises, some enterprises are finding that hyperscale infrastructure actually slows them down at certain scales. Large enterprises like Geico have publicly documented how cloud infrastructure became a bottleneck rather than an accelerator for their operations.
Broadly speaking, American enterprises have embraced cloud-first strategies while concentrating their infrastructure with a single hyperscaler. They’ ve gravitated toward diversified, multi-cloud approaches that spread risk across multiple providers and infrastructure types.
Making migration strategic
What began as whispered concerns in boardrooms has evolved into active strategic planning as organizations across the continent begin pulling workloads back from US-based infrastructure.
36
INTELLIGENT CIO EUROPE www. intelligentcio. com