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Data migration remains a key operational function that organizations must master to leverage the full benefits of hybrid and multicloud environments. Data sovereignty considerations and egress charges are increasingly reshaping how organizations plan and execute migrations, adding new complexity to operations that were already challenged by large payloads and security concerns. Data migration between public cloud providers and data repatriation — moving data from public cloud to company-owned or colocation data centers — remain common practices.
The Take
The growing challenges associated with data migration continue to force organizations to reevaluate their processes and procedures for running this sensitive operation. As data volumes expand and hybrid and multicloud architectures become the norm, most organizations now have experience moving large payloads between on-premises, colocation and public cloud environments — and the operational, financial and regulatory stakes have never been higher.
Two emerging forces are reshaping migration strategy in 2026: data sovereignty requirements and the financial burden of egress charges. Regulatory pressures tied to data residency are making migration planning and operations more difficult for a significant portion of organizations, adding legal and compliance complexity on top of existing technical challenges. Meanwhile, egress fees continue to limit cloud flexibility and drive organizations toward alternative providers or on-premises strategies. Together, these forces are pushing organizations to be more deliberate about where data lives and how it moves, and to lean increasingly on service providers and systems integrators to manage the complexity.
Summary of findings
Data repatriation and migrations between public clouds remain common. Nearly half of respondents to a study conducted by 451 Research by S&P Global (47%) report repatriating data from a public cloud provider to a company-owned data center or colocation provider in the past year, compared with 41% in our 2025 survey and 40% in 2024. Cloud-to-cloud migration also remains prevalent, with 74% of respondents migrating data between public cloud providers in the last 12 months, compared with 78% in 2025.
Large payload migrations remain prevalent. More than two-thirds of respondents (69%) say their organization has migrated over 1 petabyte of data between environments, comparable with 70% in 2025 and up significantly from 40% in 2024. As data payloads have grown, 29% of respondents strongly agree that migrations take too long to complete, compared with 30% in 2025 and 20% in 2024.
Security and data loss concerns persist. About two in five respondents (38%) strongly agree that data migrations raise concerns related to security threats and vulnerabilities, compared with 36% in 2025 and 31% in 2024. Extended unplanned downtime also remains a concern: 24% strongly agree they have experienced it due to a migration, compared with 25% in 2025 and 13% in 2024.
Service providers and systems integrators continue to take on more migration work. In 2026, 50% of respondents say in-house staff manages data migrations, on par with 48% in 2025 and down substantially from 65% in 2024. Meanwhile, service providers and systems integrators manage 45% of migrations, compared with 46% in 2025 and 24% in 2024. Given the rising complexity and risk associated with migrations, we expect this outsourcing trend to continue.
Egress charges continue to reshape cloud storage strategies. Nearly three in four respondents (72%) indicate that egress charges have affected their organization’s use of cloud storage, unchanged from 2025 and up from 53% in 2024.
Among those impacted, the top negative consequences include increased cost of cloud storage (65%), prevented implementation of multicloud architecture (38%) and slowed adoption of cloud storage (38%).
Data sovereignty emerges as a significant migration challenge. About two-thirds of respondents (66%) indicate that data sovereignty considerations have made data migration planning and/or operations more difficult.
Among those affected, the top consequences to migration strategy include keeping data in-country (57%), using regional cloud zones (55%), repatriating data from the cloud back to on-premises (48%) and delaying planned migrations (41%).
As regulatory and geopolitical pressures related to data residency intensify globally, we expect data sovereignty to become an increasingly prominent factor in migration planning.
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The author used a proprietary S&P Global AI platform in the production of the report that this blog post was based on. It was subsequently peer-reviewed, fact-checked and edited before publication.
This content may be AI-assisted and is composed, reviewed, edited and approved by S&P Global in accordance with our Terms of Service.
