The same capability, consistency, and performance are delivered seamlessly across cloud, on-prem, hybrid, and even air-gapped environments. This ensures your mission is always protected, no matter where it operates.
Cloud computing promised a revolution, and it delivered one. It turned provisioning into seconds and put the same infrastructure, services, and agility once reserved for big players into the hands of every organization. But as the world embraced it, new challenges emerged. The rise of AI and advanced analytics added an unexpected twist, unleashing data volumes no one had anticipated. This flooded networks with constant traffic and raised new concerns about confidentiality and sovereignty as information moved freely across regions. Even reliability, once taken for granted, now hinged on something as fragile as constant connectivity.
The cloud may still be everyone’s favorite destination, but many have started to realize they packed a little too much for the journey. After years of moving everything upward, organizations are beginning to recognize that not every workload is suited for that height. Cloud repatriation is gaining traction as companies bring select workloads back home to cut latency, regain control, and keep pace with compliance and cost expectations. This is especially true for enterprise AI and data analytics—where data gravity and compute demand make proximity a strategic advantage.
Confirmed by a 2025 InfoWorld report, cloud repatriation is a trend: more than one in five enterprises have already shifted parts of their data and compute off the public cloud to rebalance performance and economics. Others, including global manufacturers and financial institutions, are taking a similar path by right-sizing hybrid environments to fit their needs.
That’s the real takeaway. The cloud was never the issue. The problem was believing everything belonged there. The revolution didn’t end; the conversation simply shifted from if to how far. If asked about the possibilities: could we move faster, scale bigger, do more in the cloud? How far is about wisdom: how much to keep, how much to control, and how to make both work together.
The Cloud’s Most Reluctant Adopters Became Its Smartest Users
Critical infrastructure and government agencies were often seen as slow to move, but they were simply deliberate. While others chased scale and speed, these organizations focused on continuity, sovereignty, and trust, values that proved far more durable over time. Their approach to modernization was never about rushing forward, but about moving wisely, balancing innovation with control.
They started with certified public clouds, which were designed for controlled workloads. Under frameworks such as FedRAMP and the JWCC program, agencies gained the agility of shared compute and collaboration without compromising compliance. These secure government cloud environments became the foundation for inter-agency analytics, data sharing, and digital collaboration, all within secure, regulated boundaries.
For missions that required complete isolation, private and classified cloud environments provided the answer. Purpose-built systems for government and intelligence operations handled classified telemetry, communications, and real-time command workloads. These physically separate clouds allowed agencies to modernize even their most sensitive systems without ever exposing them to the public internet.
When operations stretched beyond connectivity, agencies turned to cloud-on-prem solutions that bring cloud-native capabilities directly to the edge—in remote bases, air-gapped facilities, or industrial networks. These platforms delivered high-performance processing, advanced analytics, and even AI in places where traditional cloud access wasn’t possible, keeping mission-critical workloads running under local control.
This approach proved that modernization doesn’t have to be confined to a single environment. By combining certified public, private, and on-prem deployments, agencies built an ecosystem that adapts to each mission’s reality, is flexible enough to innovate, and is controlled enough to protect. It’s a balance that keeps performance, sovereignty, and trust moving together—even when conditions change.
From Strategy to Execution: The Forescout Vision in Practice
That same philosophy is at the core of Forescout’s vision. Our mission is to deliver consistent, comprehensive capabilities to discover, assess, control, and govern every environment. Whether workloads operate in the cloud, on-premises, hybrid, or fully air-gapped networks, Forescout provides a unified foundation of visibility and control, shaped around each mission’s unique reality. Security, after all, isn’t about where the mission runs; it’s about ensuring it never stops running.
To put that vision into practice, Forescout is collaborating with NVIDIA to align deep security intelligence with advanced, AI-powered infrastructure built for the edge. At the core of this collaboration is the NVIDIA BlueField data processing unit (DPU), an infrastructure processor that offloads key security operations like encryption, traffic inspection, and network segmentation.
Each BlueField acts as its own zero-trust domain, isolating workloads and stopping lateral movement. Layered with NVIDIA Morpheus for real-time, AI-driven traffic analysis and the NVIDIA DOCA framework for secure programmability, it forms a hardware-accelerated security stack that keeps data local, performance high, and control in the hands of the operator.
The newest generation, NVIDIA BlueField-4, pushes this model further. BlueField-4 is an accelerated infrastructure platform for gigascale AI factories, delivering powerful computing, 800 Gb/s throughput, and enabling multi-tenant networking, AI runtime security, rapid data access, and high-performance inference processing.
With six times the compute of previous versions, it can run AI inference, encryption, and microsegmentation directly at the edge, right where data is created and decisions are made. BlueField-4 turns each node into a policy-enforcing, telemetry-rich control point that inspects flows at line rate, isolates sensitive functions, and keeps critical workloads responsive even when links are constrained. It extends orchestration and acceleration into disconnected or classified environments, bringing cloud-grade intelligence to places the cloud can’t reach. This results in a local-cloud capability that supports multiple security applications side by side—from threat detection to data-loss prevention to zero-trust segmentation, without sacrificing performance or sovereignty.
Modern and Legacy: Moving Forward Together
Many organizations still rely on legacy infrastructure that wasn’t built for today’s security and data demands. Upgrading these systems is essential, yet full-scale replacements are often impractical and risky. For sectors such as critical infrastructure, government, and defense, the goal isn’t to modernize at all costs; it’s to evolve intelligently. Real progress comes from allowing modern technologies, AI, cloud, and high-performance compute to work with legacy systems rather than against them. When innovation adapts to operational reality instead of forcing replacement, continuity and progress can finally coexist.
In an energy substation, this means deploying AI-driven anomaly detection alongside decades-old control systems without disruption. For air-gapped operations environments, it means processing sensor data locally to maintain situational awareness when external links are cut. In manufacturing, it means building secure edge clusters that analyze and optimize production in real time, right next to the machinery they protect. Instead of rebuilding from scratch, organizations are choosing hybrid paths, modernizing their on-prem environments while strategically integrating cloud capabilities.
This is the future of secure transformation: not a break from the past, but a bridge between what already works and what tomorrow requires.
Come see us at:
NVIDIA GTC Washington, D.C. from Oct 27 – 29, 2025: Forescout’s VP of OT Strategy, Christina Hoefer, is speaking on the panel: “Building Resilient Infrastructure: Advancing Operational Technology Cybersecurity for Public and Regulated Sectors”.