Hybrid cloud has been in the spotlight for years, now and then fading into the background when public cloud adoption surges, only to resurface with renewed urgency.
With recent concerns in data sovereignty, cost pressures, and the need for resilience, the debate is back.
Let’s break down what hybrid cloud actually means, why it matters, and what the future could look like.
Reading time 4 minutes Published: 08 October 2025
In short:
A hybrid cloud is a combination of an on-premise or private environment with the public cloud. In such a setup, workloads run partially on public cloud platforms, such as Microsoft Azure, AWS, and GCP, while other workloads remain on-premise or in private data centres.
Over the past decade, companies have moved away from on-prem servers to public cloud platforms, including Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud. Public clouds brought scale, security, and innovation. For most, the public cloud is now the default.
However, not every workload is a perfect fit for the public cloud. Hosting your services and your workloads in a (private) data centre still has its positive sides, which is why the term “hybrid” keeps resurfacing, as a middle ground.
Even with public clouds, companies often want complete control over where their data is stored. Legal and compliance teams may require sensitive data to be stored in a specific location, such as a private data centre.
However, if you are already in the public cloud, moving away to a private cloud can be challenging, expensive, and time-consuming. We believe the future of a hybrid cloud will involve companies adopting a hybrid setup, where they combine public cloud and private cloud services.
In Europe, concerns about digital sovereignty have led to initiatives such as NeoPhos, the “new European cloud” backed by the EU and major corporations.
“ I don't believe that everyone's going to move to a European cloud. Simply because it will be way more expensive, smaller and less scalable. There may be a scenario in the future where you use the public cloud (like Azure, AWS, etc) for some processing and the latest technologies, while keeping your data storage, processing or residency in that European cloud, a possible future hybrid setup.”
Wesley Haakman - Principal Azure Architect & MVP
Hybrid cloud doesn’t automatically reduce vendor lock-in. Even with solutions like Azure Local, you’re still tied to a single provider’s APIs and tools.
What it does give you is control: the ability to decide where data is stored and how workloads are distributed.
True portability across clouds usually requires an extra layer of abstraction beyond the provider’s native services.
Kubernetes provides a standard way to run and manage workloads across environments. With Kubernetes, the underlying cloud matters less. You can deploy the same containerised applications on-prem, in Azure, AWS, or potentially in the future (or even a European regional cloud).
And when combined with tools like Fleet or Dapr, Kubernetes enables workloads to move dynamically to the location that’s cheapest, most compliant, or most sustainable. It doesn’t remove all vendor dependencies, but it does make hybrid and multi-cloud strategies far more practical.
Many organisations have already been running hybrid setups for years, for example, through on-prem servers combined with Azure Arc-managed services. What’s changing now is the sophistication and automation around hybrid workloads.
The future of public clouds holds a combination of public and private clouds, with automated, policy-driven deployment using Kubernetes and related tools to move workloads dynamically between clouds or private data centres.
Over the next decade, expect hybrid setups to become smarter, more automated, and better able to adapt to evolving technology and regulatory requirements. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), the foundation of cloud native computing, will undoubtedly play a key and central role in this shift, guiding how hybrid cloud evolves.
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