VMware’s comprehensive “Private Cloud Outlook 2025” report, based on a survey of 1,800 senior IT decision-makers worldwide, reveals a fundamental shift in how enterprises approach cloud infrastructure. The findings paint a clear picture: organizations are moving beyond the traditional “cloud-first” mentality to embrace what researchers call “The Cloud Reset”—a more strategic, workload-centric approach that deliberately balances public and private cloud environments.
These insights have profound implications for enterprises managing data across these hybrid cloud environments. Let’s explore how the report’s key findings align with the challenges that the Resilio Active Everywhere platform is uniquely positioned to solve.
The Hybrid Cloud Reality: 93% of Enterprises Are All-In
The report’s most striking finding? 93% of enterprises now deliberately run a mix of private and public cloud platforms, and this percentage is expected to hold steady through 2028. This isn’t an accident or a transitional phase—it’s an intentional strategy that recognizes the unique strengths of each environment.
But intentional hybrid cloud strategies come with unintentional challenges. How do you maintain data consistency across environments? How do you ensure seamless collaboration when teams are working with data that spans public cloud services, data centers, and edge locations?
This is where Resilio Active Everywhere excels. Our platform is purpose-built for hybrid cloud reality, providing real-time data synchronization across any combination of public and private cloud providers and on-premises infrastructure. Whether your critical data lives in AWS, your private VMware environment, or edge locations worldwide, Active Everywhere ensures it’s always available, always current, and always accessible to the teams that need it.
Security Concerns Drive the “Cloud Reset”
The report identifies security as the primary challenge across multiple cloud initiatives:
- 29% cite security risks as the top public cloud challenge
- 49% identify data privacy and security concerns as the primary GenAI adoption barrier
- Security is the leading reason for workload repatriation from public to private cloud
In contrast, 92% of organizations trust their private cloud for security and compliance, highlighting a significant trust gap between deployment models.
Resilio Active Everywhere bridges this security divide by providing enterprise-grade security across all environments:
- Zero-trust architecture with end-to-end encryption
- No cloud dependencies for data transfer—your data moves directly between your environments
- Granular access controls and audit trails that work consistently across hybrid infrastructure
- Compliance-ready features that meet strict regulatory requirements regardless of where data resides
By eliminating the need to route sensitive data through third-party cloud services during synchronization, Active Everywhere addresses the core security concerns that are driving enterprises back to private infrastructure.
The Workload Repatriation Movement
Perhaps the most surprising finding: 69% of enterprises are considering repatriating workloads from public cloud to private environments, with 35% having already done so. This isn’t about failed migrations—it’s about strategic workload placement based on specific requirements.
The types of workloads being repatriated tell a compelling story:
- 51% are high security or compliance-sensitive applications
- 46% are data-intensive applications
- 41% require high levels of integration with other systems
Active Everywhere supports workload mobility by ensuring that when you move applications between environments, their data follows seamlessly. Our platform enables:
- Rapid data migration between public and private environments
- Continuous synchronization during transition periods
- Zero-downtime data movement for mission-critical applications
- Consistent data availability regardless of where workloads ultimately reside
Breaking Down the “Three Cs”: Cost, Complexity, and Compliance
The report identifies three major barriers to public cloud success—what we might call the “Three Cs”:
Cost: The Waste Problem
- 94% believe some of their public cloud spend is wasted
- 49% believe that waste exceeds 25%
- Only 6% believe they’re not wasting any public cloud spend
Complexity: The Silo Challenge
- 76% think public cloud creates new non-core IT silos
- 70% find that these silos make it difficult to govern cost and security
Compliance: The Trust Gap
- 66% are “very” or “extremely” concerned about storing data in public clouds
- 61% struggle with keeping up with changing compliance requirements
Active Everywhere directly addresses each of these challenges:
Cost Optimization: By providing efficient, direct data synchronization without expensive cloud egress fees or vendor lock-in, Active Everywhere helps reduce the hidden costs that contribute to cloud waste.
Complexity Reduction: Our unified platform works consistently across all environments, breaking down silos and providing IT teams with a single pane of glass for data management across their entire hybrid infrastructure.
Compliance Confidence: With built-in audit trails, encryption, and data sovereignty features, Active Everywhere helps organizations maintain compliance requirements across all environments—eliminating the compliance concerns that drive workload repatriation.
The Skills Gap Solution
The report reveals that 30% of organizations cite a lack of in-house skills as a barrier to private cloud adoption, while 80% depend on professional services for cloud-related needs. This skills gap is expensive and creates dependencies that limit organizational agility.
Active Everywhere is designed for operational simplicity:
- Intuitive management interfaces that don’t require specialized cloud expertise
- Automated conflict resolution and data integrity checking
- Self-healing architecture that reduces manual intervention
- Unified tooling that works the same way across all environments
By reducing the operational complexity of managing data across hybrid environments, Active Everywhere helps organizations reduce their dependency on external services and build internal capability more quickly.
Supporting the Modern Application Mix
The report dispels the myth that private cloud is only for legacy applications: 84% of organizations run both traditional and cloud-native applications in private cloud. When asked about preferred environments for modern container and Kubernetes workloads, responses were evenly split between public cloud (34%), private cloud (33%), and both (33%).
This application diversity creates data management challenges. Active Everywhere supports this modern application reality:
- API-first architecture that integrates seamlessly with both traditional and cloud-native applications
- Container-native deployment options for Kubernetes environments
- Event-driven synchronization that can trigger on application events
- Multi-protocol support for diverse application requirements
The GenAI Opportunity
The report shows that 98% of organizations have plans to adopt generative AI, but 49% are held back by data privacy and security concerns. Interestingly, when it comes to platform choices for AI workloads, organizations are evenly split between public cloud (56%) and private cloud (55%) environments.
Active Everywhere enables secure AI data strategies by:
- Ensuring training data is available where AI workloads run—whether that’s in secure private environments or public cloud services
- Maintaining data lineage and compliance as datasets move between environments for different AI use cases
- Providing the data velocity that AI applications require with real-time synchronization capabilities
The Platform Team Evolution
One of the most significant organizational changes revealed in the report: 81% of organizations are restructuring their IT teams around platform teams rather than technology silos. This evolution requires tools that can work across traditional boundaries.
Active Everywhere is built for the platform team era:
- Environment-agnostic operation that works consistently across infrastructure silos
- Centralized monitoring and management across all data synchronization activities
- Policy-based automation that enforces organizational standards regardless of environment
- Integration capabilities that connect with existing platform tooling
Looking Forward: The Future of Hybrid Cloud
The VMware report makes clear that hybrid cloud isn’t a transitional strategy—it’s the new normal. Organizations are building intentional, strategic approaches to workload placement that will persist for years to come. 89% of organizations expect their private and public cloud budgets to stay within ±25% of current levels over the next three years, signaling sustained investment in both environments.
This permanence of hybrid infrastructure creates an imperative for solutions that don’t just manage the complexity of multi-cloud environments, but actually make them more powerful together than they would be apart.
The Active Everywhere Advantage
As enterprises embrace “The Cloud Reset,” they need data infrastructure that matches their strategic approach. Resilio Active Everywhere provides:
Strategic Flexibility: Deploy and move workloads based on business requirements, not data constraints
Security Confidence: Maintain enterprise-grade security across all environments without compromising on functionality
Operational Simplicity: Reduce complexity and skills requirements while increasing capability
Cost Predictability: Eliminate surprise charges and vendor lock-in with transparent, efficient data movement
Future-Proof Scalable Architecture: Build on a platform that grows with your hybrid cloud strategy
The cloud reset isn’t just about rethinking where workloads run—it’s about fundamentally reimagining how enterprise data infrastructure should work in a multi-cloud world.
Ready to see how Active Everywhere can transform your hybrid cloud data strategy? Learn more about our hybrid cloud solutions or schedule a demo to experience the difference firsthand.
