On June 3, 2025, Leaseweb hosted a rooftop Round Table lunch in Paris, gathering a diverse group of IT professionals and decision-makers to discuss one central question:
What are your challenges and concerns regarding Hybrid Cloud?
As the conversation unfolded, it became clear that Hybrid Cloud, combining Public and Private Cloud infrastructures, continues to raise a wide range of both strategic and technical questions. Below, we share key insights from the event, highlighting the real-world concerns organizations face and offering takeaways from the discussion.
Promise and Pressure of Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid Cloud offers the “best of both worlds”, the agility and scale of Public Cloud, with the performance, control, and compliance of Private Cloud. But it also introduces complexity.
At the Round Table, attendees shared candid experiences and challenges:
1. Managing Complexity and Performance
Participants mentioned the difficulties of combining legacy on-premise infrastructure with modern cloud-native environments. Key concerns included:
- Maintaining application and network performance across environments
- Integrating Kubernetes with Big Data workloads
- Managing auto-scaling across clouds
- Choosing the right middleware and orchestration tools
2. Cost Visibility and FinOps
Hybrid Cloud can be flexible, but that freedom often comes at a cost. Several attendees noted:
- Public Cloud egress costs are prohibitively high
- It’s difficult to track and assign cloud costs across teams
- Tools like Terraform make it too easy to spin up new resources, adding to cost unpredictability
Tip from the table: Assigning cloud costs directly to teams can encourage better resource management and support cost control.
3. Migration and Modernization
Moving from dedicated servers to a Hybrid Cloud setup is no simple task. Attendees raised questions like:
- How can we maintain automation and cost-efficiency when transitioning?
- How do we get the “best of both worlds” without sacrificing performance or budget?
Data Sovereignty and the European Perspective
As the conversation evolved, the topic of data sovereignty and geopolitical concerns came into focus.
- Some attendees are shifting away from US-based hyperscalers like AWS due to geopolitical pressures and a desire for more localized control.
- Compliance with regulations like DORA means infrastructure must be reliable and backed up within Europe.
- There’s growing interest in supporting European cloud initiatives that prioritize transparency and sovereignty, such as the European Cloud Campus or EuroStack.
Yet, the group acknowledged a fundamental tension: Europe still relies heavily on US-born technologies, Windows, Linux, programming languages, and even initiatives like HarmonyOS from China is rooted in US tech. The challenge is finding the balance between autonomy and interdependence.
AI: Potential Meets Practicality
Once the topic of AI entered the discussion, the conversation became more animated and more personal.
Emerging Themes:
- AI requires massive data and compute power, making cloud infrastructure decisions even more strategic.
- Local LLM implementations are being replaced by enterprise-grade tools like ChatGPT Enterprise and Copilot.
- Tools like Claude.ai are praised for their ability to support code testing, integration, and multi-language development.
- AI is more useful when it’s powered by your own data, LLMs alone aren’t enough.
- AI is seen to be a game between raw compute power (big money) and smart solutions (small but powerful LLMs). In other words: who has the biggest data center vs. who has the smartest model.
Tip from the table: Do not share confidential data with public AI.
Key Takeaways
The Hybrid Cloud journey is anything but linear. Companies are navigating a complex web of:
- Performance demands
- Security and compliance requirements
- Budget constraints
- Rapid AI adoption
- Geopolitical and regulatory concerns
From our Round Table discussion, a few guiding principles emerged:
- Use Public Cloud for data-intensive, AI-driven workloads.
- Rely on Private Cloud for high-volume egress, performance, and compliance.
- Make FinOps part of your culture, not just your tooling.
- Plan migration carefully, don’t trade cost for complexity.
- Stay aware of data sovereignty and regulatory landscapes.
Final Thought
Hybrid Cloud isn’t just an infrastructure choice; it’s a strategic one. The challenges are real, but so are the opportunities. As organizations across Europe rethink their approach to cloud, sovereignty, and AI, we believe that open discussion, like the one we had in Paris, is more important than ever!
Have any questions regarding Hybrid Cloud? Make sure to contact one of our experts.