Multi-Cloud Strategy for IT Leaders

Multi-cloud strategy is one of those terms that sounds brilliant in a boardroom but can become a nightmare in practice. Every vendor pitch makes it seem straightforward - just spread your workloads across AWS, Azure, and GCP, and you will have resilience, cost savings, and freedom from lock-in. The reality is far more nuanced. I have spent over a decade managing infrastructure across multiple cloud providers, and the single biggest lesson I have learned is this: multi-cloud done badly is worse than single-cloud done well. What Multi-Cloud Really Means Multi-cloud means deliberately using two or more public cloud providers as part of a coherent strategy. Three common patterns: Best-of-breed selection - using each provider for what it does best Resilience-driven - running critical workloads across providers Commercial leverage - maintaining credible alternatives for pricing When Multi-Cloud Makes Sense Not every organisation needs multi-cloud. It genuinely makes sense when: You have regu