Rob Hirschfeld is the CEO and co-founder of RackN, founded in 2014, focused on "addressing the messy challenge of operating at scale in physical data centers," according to his LinkedIn profile. Hirschfeld has had a front-row seat to the last decade of conversations in enterprise IT ops about bare-metal server operations and cloud repatriation, topics that remain hot as some enterprises look to move AI inference workloads on-premises. Featuring: Rob Hirschfeld, CEO and co-founder of RackN In today’s episode, we’ll cover… The recent history of cloud repatriation The VMware factor in enterprise bare metal decisions How generative AI workloads change the dynamics of self-hosted infrastructure for enterprises Why going back to self-hosted infrastructure in 2025 doesn't mean going back to 2005 IT management practices and more! References: AWS AI Factories target hybrid cloud AI infrastructure | TechTarget Top 9 bare-metal cloud providers of 2025 New VMware private AI infrastructure rethinks Tanzu, again Cloud repatriation vs. multi-cloud: IT seeks cost relief To learn more about software development and platform engineering, check out Search IT Operations. To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.