Private Cloud Outlook 2025: A Definitive Cloud Reset

Learn more about Broadcom

Private clouds are no longer playing catch-up, and public clouds are no longer the default as organizations recalibrate their cloud strategies, according to the Private Cloud Outlook 2025 report from Broadcom.

More than half (53%) of survey respondents say private cloud is their top priority for deploying new workloads over the next three years, while 69% are considering workload repatriation from public to private cloud, with one-third having already done so.

Private cloud is also now a strategic equal for AI and cloud-native apps, with 66% preferring to run container and Kubernetes-based applications on private cloud or a mix of public and private, while 55% prefer private cloud for AI model training, tuning and inference.

"This report makes it clear: private cloud is a strategic platform for IT modernization," said Prashanth Shenoy, VP of Product Marketing, VMware Cloud Foundation Division (VCF) at Broadcom. "Customers are intentionally architecting for flexibility, placing workloads in environments that offer the best balance of performance, control, and cost efficiency. The cloud reset presents an opportunity to create a more effective, secure and cost-efficient IT environment. Organizations that strategically adopt a modern private cloud can better support secure GenAI innovation, improve fiscal visibility, and accelerate workload repatriation."

Security, GenAI, and Cost Predictability Accelerate the Shift to Private Cloud

As IT leaders modernize their infrastructure, they are increasingly turning to private cloud to meet a range of critical needs, from securing sensitive data to managing unpredictable GenAI workloads to improving financial visibility.

  • 92% trust private cloud for security and compliance needs.
  • 66% are "very" or "extremely" concerned about public cloud compliance, and security is cited as the leading driver for workload repatriation from public cloud.
  • Data privacy and security concerns (49%) top the list of GenAI adoption challenges.
  • Organizations are choosing private cloud environments for AI workloads at nearly the same rate as public cloud (55% vs. 56%).
  • 90% value private cloud’s financial visibility and predictability.
  • 94% report at least some level of waste on public cloud spend.
  • 49% believe more than 25% of their public cloud spend is wasted, creating significant optimization opportunities.

Accelerating the Private Cloud Momentum

Real-world public cloud experiences, the rapid rise of GenAI workloads, and increasing demands for security, compliance, and cost predictability are driving this strategic cloud realignment. To fully capitalize on private cloud advantages, organizations must address two key challenges: overcoming siloed IT teams and a perpetuating skills gap.

Respondents identified siloed IT teams present the greatest challenge to private cloud adoption (33%), and 30% cite a lack of in-house skills/expertise as a barrier to private cloud adoption. Organizations that transition from technology silos to platform teams can focus on upskilling staff to permanently close the skills gap and reduce reliance on professional services. The report found that 81% are now structuring their technical organizations around a platform team rather than technology silos.

Methodology: The report is based on a global survey conducted by market research firm Illuminas on behalf of Broadcom. The survey was fielded from March 6 to April 4, 2025, and included 1,800 senior IT decision-makers across small, medium-sized, and large enterprises in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Respondents represented sectors such as financial services, government, healthcare, insurance, and pharmaceuticals.

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Private Cloud Outlook 2025: A Definitive Cloud Reset

Learn more about Broadcom

Private clouds are no longer playing catch-up, and public clouds are no longer the default as organizations recalibrate their cloud strategies, according to the Private Cloud Outlook 2025 report from Broadcom.

More than half (53%) of survey respondents say private cloud is their top priority for deploying new workloads over the next three years, while 69% are considering workload repatriation from public to private cloud, with one-third having already done so.

Private cloud is also now a strategic equal for AI and cloud-native apps, with 66% preferring to run container and Kubernetes-based applications on private cloud or a mix of public and private, while 55% prefer private cloud for AI model training, tuning and inference.

"This report makes it clear: private cloud is a strategic platform for IT modernization," said Prashanth Shenoy, VP of Product Marketing, VMware Cloud Foundation Division (VCF) at Broadcom. "Customers are intentionally architecting for flexibility, placing workloads in environments that offer the best balance of performance, control, and cost efficiency. The cloud reset presents an opportunity to create a more effective, secure and cost-efficient IT environment. Organizations that strategically adopt a modern private cloud can better support secure GenAI innovation, improve fiscal visibility, and accelerate workload repatriation."

Security, GenAI, and Cost Predictability Accelerate the Shift to Private Cloud

As IT leaders modernize their infrastructure, they are increasingly turning to private cloud to meet a range of critical needs, from securing sensitive data to managing unpredictable GenAI workloads to improving financial visibility.

  • 92% trust private cloud for security and compliance needs.
  • 66% are "very" or "extremely" concerned about public cloud compliance, and security is cited as the leading driver for workload repatriation from public cloud.
  • Data privacy and security concerns (49%) top the list of GenAI adoption challenges.
  • Organizations are choosing private cloud environments for AI workloads at nearly the same rate as public cloud (55% vs. 56%).
  • 90% value private cloud’s financial visibility and predictability.
  • 94% report at least some level of waste on public cloud spend.
  • 49% believe more than 25% of their public cloud spend is wasted, creating significant optimization opportunities.

Accelerating the Private Cloud Momentum

Real-world public cloud experiences, the rapid rise of GenAI workloads, and increasing demands for security, compliance, and cost predictability are driving this strategic cloud realignment. To fully capitalize on private cloud advantages, organizations must address two key challenges: overcoming siloed IT teams and a perpetuating skills gap.

Respondents identified siloed IT teams present the greatest challenge to private cloud adoption (33%), and 30% cite a lack of in-house skills/expertise as a barrier to private cloud adoption. Organizations that transition from technology silos to platform teams can focus on upskilling staff to permanently close the skills gap and reduce reliance on professional services. The report found that 81% are now structuring their technical organizations around a platform team rather than technology silos.

Methodology: The report is based on a global survey conducted by market research firm Illuminas on behalf of Broadcom. The survey was fielded from March 6 to April 4, 2025, and included 1,800 senior IT decision-makers across small, medium-sized, and large enterprises in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Respondents represented sectors such as financial services, government, healthcare, insurance, and pharmaceuticals.

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Operator to Orchestrator: 80% of IT Pros See Shift in Role as AI Permeates Workflows

80% of respondents agree that the IT role is shifting from operators to orchestrators, according to the 2026 IT Trends Report: The Human Side of Autonomous IT from SolarWinds ...

Gartner: 40% of Organizations Deploying AI Will Use AI Observability to Monitor Model Performance by 2028

40% of organizations deploying AI will implement dedicated AI observability tools by 2028 to monitor model performance, bias and outputs, according to Gartner ...

Almost Half of AI-Generated Code Fails in Production

Until AI-powered engineering tools have live visibility of how code behaves at runtime, they cannot be trusted to autonomously ensure reliable systems, according to the State of AI-Powered Engineering Report 2026 report from Lightrun. The report reveals that a major volume of manual work is required when AI-generated code is deployed: 43% of AI-generated code requires manual debugging in production, even after passing QA or staging tests. Furthermore, an average of three manual redeploy cycles are required to verify a single AI-suggested code fix in production ...

AI Requires Design, Not Edicts

Many organizations describe AI as strategic, but they do not manage it strategically. When AI plans are disconnected from strategy, detached from organizational learning, and protected from serious assumptions testing, the problem is no longer technical immaturity; it is a failure of management discipline ... Executives too often tell organizations to "use AI" before they define what AI is supposed to change. The problem deepens in organizations where strategy isn't well articulated in the first place ...

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Across the enterprise technology landscape, a quiet crisis is playing out. Organizations have run hundreds, sometimes thousands, of generative AI pilots. Leadership has celebrated the proof of concept (POCs) ... Industry experience points to a sobering reality: only 5-10% of AI POCs that progress to the pilot stage successfully reach scaled production. The remaining 90% fail because the enterprise environment around them was never ready to absorb them, not the AI models ...

Reliability Is the New Bottleneck of Innovation

Today's modern systems are not what they once were. Organizations now rely on distributed systems, event-driven workflows, hybrid and multi-cloud environments and continuous delivery pipelines. While each adds flexibility, it also introduces new, often invisible failures. Development speed is no longer the primary bottleneck of innovation. Reliability is ...

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Seeing is believing, or in this case, seeing is understanding, according to New Relic's 2025 Observability Forecast for Retail and eCommerce report. Retailers who want to provide exceptional customer experiences while improving IT operations efficiency are leaning on observability ... Here are five key takeaways from the report ...

Maximizing Impact Amid Constraints: The Role of Automation and Orchestration in Federal IT Modernization

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Reliability is no longer proven by uptime alone, according to the The SRE Report 2026 from LogicMonitor. In the AI era, it is experienced through speed, consistency, and user trust, and increasingly judged by business impact. As digital services grow more complex and AI systems move into production, traditional monitoring approaches are struggling to keep pace, increasing the need for AI-first observability that spans applications, infrastructure, and the Internet ...

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