Not long ago, it seemed like every workload was headed for the public cloud. Fast forward to 2025, and dedicated servers and bare metal are making a strong return—not because of nostalgia, but because businesses are finding they solve real problems.
Rising cloud costs, stricter data regulations, and the growing demand for AI workloads are pushing companies to take another look at dedicated hosting. The scope is clear: consistent performance, better control over compliance, and predictable costs.
In this article, we’ll look at what’s driving this repatriation*, when dedicated infrastructure is the smarter choice, and how to weigh the trade-offs with today’s data in mind.
* In the hosting / cloud industry, “repatriation” means moving workloads, data, or applications out of the public cloud and back to dedicated servers, bare metal or colocation. It’s the opposite of cloud migration.
Surveys & Facts: What the data says
A recent survey by TechRadar of 1,000+ IT professionals found 86% of organizations still use dedicated servers; 42% reported moving some workloads from public cloud back to dedicated infrastructure in the last 12 months.
Additional valid sources are reporting that repatriation is indeed happening:
- Analysts caution this isn’t a mass exodus: only ~8–9% of companies plan full workload repatriation—most are selectively moving pieces like data, backups, or steady compute. IDC Blog, Puppet
- Uptime Institute’s 2025 survey indicates 46% of AI inference workloads run on-premises and 34% in colocation, with a minority leaning primarily on public cloud today. NEXTDC
Why Bare-metal Servers are Rising Again
1) Cost clarity vs surprise bills
Cloud its powerful especially when it comes to elasticity and speed. However, unpredictable consumption can turn budgets into moving targets.
In a recent research by Flexera, managing cloud spend remains the #1 challenge; budgets exceeded targets by ~17% in the prior year and are still rising. Financials with dedicated infrastructure are fair and straight-forward: you pay for the capacity you own, not every read, write, or packet.
2) Consistent Performance
Bare metal hosting eliminates the virtualization layer and multi-tenant risks. For databases, latency-sensitive trading platforms, and high-throughput applications, having a consistent performance beats burst capacity models that are usually offered by cloud providers.
Modern bare-metal providers now offer cloud-like APIs and instant provisioning servers —making dedicated hosting feel as if customer is purchasing a cloud instance.
3) AI and Data Sovereignty
AI changed the infrastructure world. Training for modern AI models requires GPU density, high bandwidth, and predictable I/O.
Many operators are keeping AI close to their data for cost, control, and sovereignty reasons—hence the preference toward on-premises, colocation, and dedicated servers for AI workloads.
4) Compliance and Control
Regulated industries (finance, public sector, health) are known for their preference towards dedicated hosting for isolation, auditability, and deterministic change management.
Organizations find it easier to document processes and prepare compliance reports for a physical infrastructure which is leased, on-prem, or co-located in a specific data center facility.
IT Fields where Dedicated Hosting Shines
NetShop ISP powers 9,000+ customers worldwide — from freelancers and SMEs to large organizations. The findings from our research align closely with insights from our extensive client base regarding the applications most commonly deployed on bare-metal servers.
- Databases and data platforms
High IOPS storage (NVMe), predictable CPU, and dedicated memory allocation make dedicated servers ideal for OLTP (online transaction processing), analytics engines, and message/streaming infrastructure. - AI/ML training and inference
For companies with ongoing AI demands, bare metal servers with GPUs can reduce the overall costs. Uptime Institute data indicates many operators prefer to run on-prem or in colocation to control power density, cooling, and data locality. - Low-latency workloads
Forex trading, ad auctions, multiplayer gaming, and personalization engines benefit from single-tenant hardware, which are easier to standardize on physical, dedicated servers. - Steady, long-running services
If a workload’s utilization curve is stable and predictable month-to-month, committing to bare metal capacity often yields lower TCO (total cost of ownership) than Pay-per-use cloud.
What lies ahead
It’s not really about moving everything back from the cloud—it’s about finding balance.
Devops teams, CTO’s and CIO’s, today, are being more practical: running each workload where it makes the most sense in terms of cost, performance, and risk.
Surveys show that dedicated servers and bare metal are becoming an important part of that mix, especially for AI, data-heavy applications and latency-sensitive workloads, while the cloud is still the preferred option when it comes to flexibility and global reach.
As infrastructure choices get more complex, the real challenge for businesses isn’t picking between cloud or dedicated hosting—it’s knowing how to combine them in a way that supports long-term growth.
That’s where the right partner makes a difference. At NetShop ISP, we’ve spent over 20 years helping companies in finance, iGaming, fintech and ICT design hosting solutions that strike the right balance between cost, performance, and compliance.
