The enterprise sector is undergoing a “cloud reset” as firms recalibrate their cloud strategy away from public cloud into a hybrid model centred around private cloud, according to a new report.

Broadcom’s Private Cloud Outlook 2025 report surveyed 1800 IT leaders from across the globe, finding that 93% of firms deliberately balance a mix of private and public clouds, and their top 3-year priority is building new workloads in private clouds.

According to the survey, conducted by Illuminas on behalf of Broadcom, almost 70% of respondents are considering repatriating workloads from public cloud to private, with one-third having already done so. 84% said they run both traditional and cloud-native applications in private cloud, dispelling its legacy image.

“This report makes it clear: private cloud is a strategic platform for IT modernisation,” said Prashanth Shenoy, vice president of product marketing, VMware Cloud Foundation Division 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. Organisations that strategically adopt a modern private cloud can better support secure GenAI innovation, improve fiscal visibility, and accelerate workload repatriation.”

The report found security and compliance concerns dominate challenges with both public cloud adoption and generative AI (GenAI) initiatives, while serving as the top driver for repatriation of workloads from public cloud to private.

Just over 90% of the respondents said they trust private cloud for security and compliance, but the normal setup is dominated by mixed models: 92% of enterprises run a blend of private and public clouds. Three quarters said this mix is part of an intentional strategy.

Just 15% said they would prefer an all-public cloud model, while 10% favour private-only models. This follows years of substantial growth in public cloud spending – a Gartner report from 2024 predicted worldwide public cloud end-user spending to total $723 billion in 2025, up from $595.7 billion in 2024, which itself was more than double 2020’s spend of $270 billion.

Almost 90% of organisations expect private and public cloud budgets to stay within ±25% of current levels over the next three years. Among those forecasting larger shifts, nearly three times as many plan to increase spend (8%) as to cut (3%), with private and public clouds showing identical outlooks.

Broadcom CTO EMEA Joe Baguley told TI at a London launch of the report that there were signs that enterprises have been on a journey that initially started with a rush to public cloud.

“There is a trend towards private cloud and repatriation,” he said. “That doesn’t mean everyone is exiting public cloud and throwing away that investment, but enterprises are finally seeing that not one solution fits all their needs. They have to have both.”

Even though data suggests 83% of enterprises are repatriating to private cloud, the data doesn’t reveal how many processes or systems are being repatriated, but Baguley said he has seen a slow down in adoption and, in some cases, “a stop or reversal”.

Database and storage were among the biggest statistical responses, according to Broadcom, which, according to Baguley’s colleague – Broadcom strategy director UK&I – Joseph Langford, should come as no surprise.”

“It comes down to security and risk,” he explained at the breakfast launch, which took place in Heron Tower.

“Given the backdrop, where everyone wants to explore how they can get the most out of their data to gain a competitive edge, you begin to see why they want to bring that in-house.”

The publishing of the report coincided with the launch of general availability Broadcom’s VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 – its primary private cloud offering.

VCF was Broadcom’s offering when it shifted VMware customers to a subscription model following its acquisition of the cloud company in 2023. According to Baguley, over 87% of Broadcom’s largest 10,000 cloud customers have already renewed onto the new model, turning to private cloud, with the rest up for renewal in the coming few years.

Langford added: “VCF9.0 has started to enable a different way of thinking for our clients. We have a marketplace that is realising we need to run private clouds properly.

“We have the heritage and the technology to provide hybrid cloud solutions, and that is now becoming a reality. A multi-cloud or hybrid environment is becoming a reality and we can provide the best platform to support that.”