Multi-Cloud Is Rarely the Right Default

Multi-cloud — running workloads across AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure simultaneously — is frequently discussed but rarely beneficial for most organizations. The operational complexity of managing multiple cloud providers usually outweighs the theoretical benefits. At Nexis Limited, we take a pragmatic approach — we build on a primary cloud provider and use multi-cloud selectively for specific, justified use cases.

When Multi-Cloud Makes Sense

Best-of-Breed Services

Each cloud provider has strengths. Using Google Cloud's BigQuery for analytics while running your application on AWS is practical multi-cloud. You are not duplicating infrastructure — you are using specialized services where each provider excels. Other examples: using Cloudflare for CDN and DNS, AWS for compute and databases, and Google Cloud for machine learning.

Regulatory and Data Sovereignty

Some industries and regions require data to be stored in specific jurisdictions or with specific providers. Government contracts may mandate specific cloud providers. Multi-cloud may be necessary to serve customers in regions where your primary provider has limited presence.

Acquisition and Merger

When companies merge, they often inherit infrastructure on different cloud providers. Running multi-cloud during the transition period is pragmatic. Long-term consolidation to one provider is usually the goal.

Resiliency for Critical Infrastructure

For truly critical systems (financial trading platforms, emergency services), multi-cloud can provide resilience against a complete cloud provider outage. These outages are rare (hours per year) but catastrophic for certain applications.

When Multi-Cloud Doesn't Make Sense

Avoiding Vendor Lock-In

The most commonly cited reason for multi-cloud — and the least valid. True cloud portability requires using only the lowest-common-denominator services (VMs, block storage, basic networking). This means forgoing the most valuable cloud services (managed databases, serverless functions, AI/ML services, managed Kubernetes) that provide real productivity advantages. The "portability" benefit rarely justifies the operational cost.

Negotiating Leverage

Running production workloads on two clouds to negotiate better pricing doubles your operational complexity for marginal pricing improvements. A better approach: commit to one provider and negotiate volume discounts (Reserved Instances, Savings Plans).

Redundancy Against Outages

Major cloud providers offer multi-region and multi-availability-zone redundancy within their own platform. AWS, for example, offers independent regions across the globe with multiple availability zones per region. Multi-region within one cloud provider provides sufficient redundancy for all but the most extreme requirements.

Hidden Costs of Multi-Cloud

  • Operational expertise: Each cloud provider has its own services, APIs, security models, networking, IAM, and best practices. Your team must master all of them to the same depth. This doubles or triples the expertise requirement.
  • Tooling duplication: CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, alerting, logging, and infrastructure-as-code must work across multiple providers. Terraform helps but does not eliminate provider-specific complexity.
  • Data transfer costs: Moving data between clouds is expensive. Cross-cloud data transfer can be a significant and growing cost.
  • Networking complexity: Connecting networks across cloud providers requires VPN tunnels or dedicated interconnects, adding latency, cost, and failure points.
  • Security surface: Each cloud provider is an independent security boundary. Misconfiguration on any provider creates a vulnerability. More providers mean more attack surface.

Practical Recommendations

  1. Start with one cloud provider. Choose based on your team's expertise, the specific services you need, and your geographic requirements.
  2. Use provider-managed services. Managed databases, serverless functions, and platform services are more productive than deploying everything on VMs for portability.
  3. Use multi-region within one provider for redundancy and geographic performance.
  4. Use multi-cloud selectively for best-of-breed services like analytics, CDN, or ML — not for duplicating your core infrastructure.
  5. Invest in abstraction layers (Terraform, Kubernetes) that ease future migration if needed, without the cost of running multi-cloud today.

Conclusion

Multi-cloud adds significant operational complexity and cost. For most organizations, the pragmatic approach is to build deeply on one cloud provider, use multi-region for redundancy, and selectively use other providers for specific best-of-breed services. True multi-cloud is justified only for specific regulatory, resiliency, or organizational requirements.

Planning your cloud strategy? Our team provides cloud architecture consulting and migration services.