Ingram Micro Exec On Public Cloud Repatriation: 'Expect This Trend To Grow'

An increasing number of solution providers are getting requests from customers to repatriate applications and data back from the public cloud due to a number of concerns, an executive from IT distributor Ingram Micro said on Monday.

"Expect this trend to grow over the course of the next year," said Karl Connolly, chief technologist for enterprise accounts at Ingram Micro, during XChange 2019, held this week in Las Vegas and hosted by CRN parent The Channel Company.

[Related: Businesses Moving From Public Cloud Due To Security, Says IDC Survey]

He cited data from research firm IDC, which indicates that 80 percent of organizations may be looking to repatriate 50 percent of their data from the public cloud over the next two years.

"That's a huge number. And I didn't quite believe it, until I went around talking to partners such as yourselves. A lot of your customers are struggling with security, cost, performance and shadow IT," Connolly said. "The problem is, if they're going to repatriate the data, where are they going to put it? A lot of customers have divested in their data centers and have lost skill sets."

To meet these needs, Ingram Micro is promoting a hosted private cloud solution, CenturyLink Private Cloud on VMware Cloud Foundation, which is "about to go live," Connolly said.

The solution, which leverages HPE hardware and the VMware Cloud Foundation software suite, can allow organizations to regain cost predictability as well as receive enhanced security and performance, he said.

"We feel so strongly about this trend of repatriation that we really put our money where our mouth is, and we did something we don't typically do—we pre-bought 16 instances of [CenturyLink's] hosted private cloud," Connolly said.

Opportunities for partners related to the hosted private cloud offering including analyzing which applications might be good candidates for repatriation from the public cloud, as well as re-architecting applications and providing migration services, Connolly said.

"We're not saying the public cloud is going away,” he said, noting that Ingram Micro has had a cloud practice since 2009. “We're simply saying that a lot of partners, for various reasons, want to put applications in the private cloud for performance, for security, for control, for predictability.”

Shadow IT, security concerns and predictability are among the major issues driving public cloud repatriation, agreed Michael Cass, partner and director of business technology for midmarket office at Bannockburn, Ill.-based Netrix, No. 189 on the 2018 CRN Solution Provider 500.

"We at Netrix have built our CloudHelm platform on private cloud just four years ago, specifically around that," Cass said.

The goal is "to have multiple options" for customers, he said.

"Whether it's security or predictability, or people just not being sure what the direction of some public clouds are going to go, they just feel more comfortable being in a private cloud," Cass said.