Analysis ·
AI has killed the "cloud-first" strategy: why hybrid IT is the only way forward today
Original title, in French: “L'IA a tué la stratégie "cloud-first" : pourquoi l'informatique hybride est la seule voie à suivre aujourd'hui”
- Publication
- ZDNet France (France)
- Author
- Joe McKendrick
- Published on
- 6 January 2026 · read in the page structured data · updated on 2 September 2026
Summary
Drawing on a Deloitte analysis, the article explains that the rise of AI is challenging the "cloud-first" strategy adopted by many companies over the past decade. Deloitte points to four problems: unpredictable escalation of cloud costs for AI, latency constraints incompatible with certain uses, resilience needs in the event of connection outages, and data sovereignty requirements. The firm recommends a three-tier hybrid approach: cloud for training elasticity, on-premises for production inference with predictable costs, and edge computing for decisions requiring minimal latency. Milankumar Rana, a former software architect at FedEx Services, confirms this trend: he recommends that his clients keep latency-sensitive or regulation-sensitive applications on-premises, while using the cloud for flexibility.
Summary based on the full text of the article.
Read the article on ZDNet France →Figures cited
-
280 reduction factor
fall in the cost of AI tokens over two years
global, two-year period, according to Deloitte
« Les coûts des jetons d'IA ont été divisés par 280 en deux ans, observent-ils, et pourtant "certaines entreprises voient leurs factures mensuelles s'élever à des dizaines de millions". »
Source: Deloitte
-
70 %
cloud cost threshold beyond which on-premises investment becomes more cost-effective
predictable AI workloads, according to Deloitte's analysis
« Cela peut se produire lorsque les coûts du cloud commencent à dépasser 60 à 70 % du coût total d'acquisition de systèmes équivalents sur site, ce qui rend l'investissement en capital plus intéressant que les dépenses opérationnelles pour les charges de travail prévisibles en matière d'IA. »
Source: Deloitte
Classification
- Country
- Worldwide scope
- Company size
- All sizes
- Industries
- Software vendors, IT services companies, telecoms · Transport, logistics, supply chain · All industries, or industry not specified
- Companies
- Azure (supplier), FedEx Services (deploys AI), Deloitte (study author), AWS (supplier), GCP (supplier)
- Keywords
- cloud infrastructure, hybrid IT, AI costs, on-premises, edge computing, data sovereignty
Entry written by Marsanne Studio from the cited article, with the help of an AI model (claude-sonnet-5). The rights to the article and its illustrations belong to ZDNet France and its author. Entry translated from French by Claude Sonnet 5.5.