More than half of UK IT decision makers currently using public or hybrid models say they are planning to move away from U.S. based cloud providers, research from Asanti shows.

UK IT leaders are increasingly citing growing concerns around data sovereignty (95%) and data residency (93%), driving them toward sovereign cloud options.

Asanti’s findings reveal the increasing influence of global politics on IT infrastructure decisions, with 52% of those surveyed saying they’re taking strategic steps to reduce their organisation’s exposure to US cloud providers.

In addition, 45% of those surveyed, currently using US public cloud platforms, confirmed that they plan to actively limit their data’s exposure to U.S. jurisdiction in light of recent political developments.

“Organisations are becoming more aware and more wary of where their data is stored and who has jurisdiction over it,” said Stewart Laing, CEO of Asanti. “It’s no longer just about performance or cost. It’s about trust, control and strategic sovereignty.”

This shift builds on findings from October which showed that 91% of organisations were already in the process of bringing at least some applications back on-premise or into colocation facilities.

Organisations are pulling back from public cloud for a range of reasons, including high recuring costs (41%), limited control and customisation (39%), slow data transfer (36%), and security compliance and risk management concerns (39%).

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Repatriation, however, is not without its challenges. Barriers include the complexity of moving applications to internal systems (38%), inflexible contracts or cloud vendor lock0in (36%), and a lack of internal skills for repatriation (41%).

“Cloud is powerful – but not perfect. The lesson here is that infrastructure strategy needs to be driven by business needs, not vendor hype,” added Laing. “We strongly advise UK organisations to revisit their current and future hosting strategies with a more critical eye, especially as AI workloads, regulatory scrutiny, and cyber threats escalate.”

Asanti recommends organisations take car to assess the geopolitical risks when selecting providers, whilst also ensuring they match workload sensitivity to the hosting model and ensuring the flexibility to move.