Understanding Multicloud

Last reviewed: August 2026

What is multicloud

Multicloud is a strategy of deliberately combining and operating two or more public cloud vendors. It’s not simply about holding accounts with multiple vendors — it means distributing workloads purposefully across vendors and operating them in an integrated way.

Let’s distinguish multicloud from similar-sounding but distinct concepts.

Strategy	Definition	Example
Multicloud	Combining 2 or more public clouds	AWS (compute) + Google Cloud (AI/ML)
Hybrid cloud	Connecting on-premises + public cloud	In-house data center + AWS Direct Connect
Multi-account	Operating multiple accounts within a single vendor	Separating dev/staging/prod with AWS Organizations

Adoption status

Multicloud is already a mainstream strategy.

According to the CNCF Annual Survey 2024, about 60% of enterprises use 2 or more clouds.
The Flexera 2024 State of the Cloud Report finds that 89% of enterprises have adopted a multicloud strategy.

Motivations for adoption

Avoiding vendor lock-in

Concentrating all workloads with a single vendor weakens your pricing negotiation power and leaves you vulnerable to the vendor’s policy changes. Multicloud secures negotiating leverage and keeps the option of migration open in the long term.

Regulation and data sovereignty

Depending on national regulations, certain data may need to be stored in a specific region, or only certified vendors may be usable. This leads to configurations where workloads are distributed across multiple vendors.

Best-of-breed service specialization

A strategy of combining each vendor’s strengths.

AI/ML: Train with Google Cloud Vertex AI + BigQuery, serve with Amazon SageMaker AI
Data analytics: Google Cloud BigQuery (analytics) + AWS S3 (storage)
Enterprise: Azure Entra ID (identity integration) + AWS (infrastructure)
Database-centric: OCI Autonomous Database + AWS (application servers)

M&A and organizational integration

During a merger or acquisition, if the acquired company uses a different vendor, coexisting as multicloud is often more realistic than immediate consolidation.

Availability and disaster recovery

A pattern of placing core services on standby with a different vendor to prepare for a single vendor’s global outage. However, since cost and complexity are high, it’s rare to adopt multicloud for this reason alone.

Challenges

Multicloud is not free. Make sure you’re prepared to accept the costs below before proceeding.

Increased operational complexity

Each vendor has a different network model, IAM system, and monitoring tools
Even with IaC (Terraform, etc.) abstraction, vendor-specific differences can’t be fully hidden
Root-causing incidents is harder than with a single vendor

Fragmented team expertise

It’s difficult for engineers to master 2–3 vendors deeply
Silos like “AWS team / Azure team” erase the benefits of integrated operations
The pool of candidates with multicloud experience is narrow

Egress costs

Moving data between clouds incurs egress (outbound) fees. Architectures that frequently transfer large volumes of data between clouds can see costs rise sharply. See Understanding the Cost Structure for each vendor’s free tier and pricing.

Fragmented observability

Each vendor’s monitoring tools (CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Cloud Monitoring) are separate
Adopting a third-party tool such as Datadog or Grafana Cloud becomes essentially required for unified observability
Distributed tracing becomes more complex when it crosses cloud boundaries

Expanded security perimeter

The attack surface grows with the number of vendors
Without adopting unified identity management (Okta, Entra ID, etc.), account management becomes fragmented
The scope of compliance audits widens

Day-2 operational burden

The complexity of multicloud becomes apparent in ongoing operations (Day-2) after initial build-out (Day-1).

Duplicate IAM audits — Separate permission reviews, cleanup of unused accounts, and policy audits must be performed per vendor
Incident ownership — When a communication failure occurs between clouds, it’s hard to determine which vendor is at fault. You may need to open tickets with both vendors simultaneously
Patch/update coordination — Since maintenance schedules differ by vendor, change management must account for the possibility of simultaneous outages
Cost governance — Different billing systems per vendor make unified cost analysis difficult. Standardization tools such as the FinOps FOCUS spec are needed

When you should not go multicloud

In the following situations, focusing on a single vendor is the better choice.

Situation	Reason
Small team (10 people or fewer)	Cannot absorb the overhead of multicloud operations
No clear regulatory requirement	Weak motivation for vendor separation
Architecture with frequent data movement	Egress costs offset the benefits
Deep dependency on vendor-specific services	Abstraction cost is too high (e.g., DynamoDB, Cosmos DB)
“Because everyone else is doing it”	Multicloud without a strategy only adds complexity

Checklist before starting multicloud

If you’re considering adopting multicloud, answer the questions below.

Is there a concrete business/regulatory reason to adopt multicloud?
Are the criteria for which workloads go to which vendor clearly defined?
Have you reviewed the network connectivity method and cost between clouds?
Do you have a unified identity management (IdP federation) strategy?
Have you selected a unified monitoring/observability tool?
Do you have the capability to manage multiple vendors with IaC?
Is your team large enough to operate 2 or more vendors?

Common mistakes

“Multicloud automatically increases availability” — Multicloud DR carries very high dual-operation cost and complexity. Single-vendor multi-region is often more realistic.
“We should do it because everyone else is doing it” — Adopting it without a clear business/regulatory reason only adds complexity. Answer “why do we need it” first.
“Abstracting with Terraform makes vendor differences disappear” — IaC can unify provisioning, but differences in the operational model — IAM, networking, monitoring — still remain.

References