Cloud repatriation
Back to your own servers — deliberately.
Rising cloud bills, the CLOUD Act, dependence on a single provider: there are good reasons to bring workloads back. And good reasons to do it deliberately rather than in a rush.
Cloud repatriation means moving workloads from US hyperscalers back to your own or European infrastructure — analysed, prioritised and step by step, without interrupting operations.
How I help
- A sober analysis: what is worth bringing back — and what is not?
- An exit plan per workload: data, dependencies, sequence
- Target infrastructure: your own servers or EU hosting, sized to fit
- Migration to open alternatives instead of a one-to-one copy of the lock-in
- Operations afterwards: updates, backups, monitoring from one hand
How it works
First call
Free: what runs where, what does it cost, what bothers you about it?
Analysis
Which workloads pay off — with an honest “better not” where it applies.
Pilot
One manageable workload first. If the move works, we know how the rest goes.
Step-by-step migration
Workload by workload, no big bang, no downtime weekends.
Ready for your own infrastructure?
The self-hosting readiness checklist shows what you need to run things on your own servers.
Open the checklist →Honesty up front
Not everything belongs back on-premises. Most companies repatriate selected workloads rather than the whole cloud — only 8–9% plan a full repatriation (IDC, 2024). Which is exactly why this starts with an analysis, not a moving van.
Frequently asked questions
Is cloud repatriation worth it at all? +
Often for individual workloads: steady loads with high running costs, data with sovereignty requirements, services caught in the egress trap. Rarely for everything — which is why analysis comes before migration.
Where do you start? +
With an inventory: what runs where, what does it really cost, where are the dependencies? Then a pilot workload — manageable, with a clear success criterion.
How long does it take? +
That depends on scope and dependencies — a serious answer is only possible after the analysis. The pilot provides the realistic basis for the rest.
Does everything have to run on our own servers afterwards? +
No. The result is often a mix: some services with European providers, some in-house, some stay put. What matters is that you can choose again.
From the blog
CLOUD Act in the EU region: not sovereignty
The CLOUD Act reaches AWS servers in Frankfurt too: US authorities can access data in any EU region. Why EU servers alone are not sovereignty.
EU Data Act: switching providers without lock-in
The Data Act gives you the right to switch cloud providers more easily. What's in it — and why open source sidesteps the lock-in problem in the first place.
Microsoft 365 alternatives: GDPR-compliant options
Nextcloud, Mailcow, Collabora and more: European open-source alternatives to Microsoft 365 — and why German regulators doubt its GDPR-compliant use.
Cloud bill too high, dependence too big?
In a free first call we work out whether repatriation adds up for you.