What Is Multicloud? Benefits & Use Cases

What Is Multicloud?

A multicloud architecture uses multiple public or private cloud services from different providers in a tightly or loosely connected architecture. CIOs often use this approach to reduce dependence on one vendor and match each workload with the cloud service that best fits its requirements.

In a simple multicloud scenario, an enterprise might use different cloud services for different purposes, similar to how a consumer might use one vendor for streaming video and another for cloud-based photo storage. In a more advanced business environment, integration lets applications running in different clouds communicate and share data. This can reduce the need to duplicate data across services and help organizations use the hardware, software, services, and tools available on each platform.

What Is Multicloud

In a multicloud architecture, an organization uses several public or private cloud services from different providers to deliver IT services.

• AWS+Oracle Database
• Azure+Oracle Database
• Google Cloud+Oracle Database
• Oracle OCI+Oracle Database
• Private Data Center+Oracle Database

Management and orchestration layer

VIDEO: What Is Multicloud? An Explainer

A multicloud strategy helps organizations connect cloud and database services across major hyperscalers. Explore how co-resident services can improve performance, simplify operations, and give businesses greater flexibility in choosing the technologies that fit their needs.

Multicloud vs. Hybrid Cloud

Multicloud and hybrid cloud are distinct but overlapping concepts. A multicloud approach uses multiple independent cloud providers, and it may also include on-premises resources. A hybrid cloud approach focuses on the combined use of public cloud services and an on-premises data center. Organizations often use hybrid clouds when they need to keep highly sensitive data on-premises or meet specialized operational requirements. Hybrid clouds can also support a phased transition to the cloud using either a single-vendor or multivendor approach. In practice, many organizations use multicloud architectures because they rely on more than one public cloud service.

Key Takeaways

• Multicloud is about flexibility. It allows applications and data to span multiple cloud providers while balancing performance, resilience, and cost.
• Multicloud architectures take advantage of the strengths of each cloud provider and service.
• Operational consistency is key: A multicloud architecture needs a common approach to identity, security, observability, and networking across diverse environments.
• Business objectives should drive multicloud adoption. These can include improved resilience, regulatory compliance, data residency requirements, vendor diversification, or other considerations.

Multicloud Explained

A multicloud strategy allows organizations to distribute workloads across multiple cloud platforms and providers. This gives IT teams the flexibility to choose the most appropriate cloud service for each workload. By matching each workload to the cloud service that best fits it, IT architects can draw on each provider’s strengths, including custom hardware, software, and service capabilities.

Because a multicloud approach involves two or more cloud providers, management occurs on multiple levels. Each platform has its own management tools and dashboards, which let IT teams oversee and configure that environment. IT teams also need a broader view, and factors such as resource use, policy compliance, interoperability, and operational efficiency are typically handled by a multicloud management system.

Why Use Multicloud?

When you run a multicloud architecture, you can combine the strongest capabilities of several cloud providers rather than accepting the limitations of a single platform. One provider may offer superior data analytics, another may offer better AI services, and another may provide more favorable pricing or geographic coverage.

Reasons to use multicloud include the following:

• Distributing workloads across multiple clouds can improve the resilience of an organization’s overall system by reducing the impact of an outage at one provider.
• Organizations that need to meet data residency or latency requirements can run relevant systems in data centers that are geographically close to users.
• Multicloud can reduce strategic dependence on one vendor. By designing applications around portable technologies, such as containers, Kubernetes, infrastructure as code, and open APIs, organizations gain greater flexibility to move workloads when pricing or performance no longer meet business needs or priorities change.

How Does Multicloud Work?

Multicloud works by allowing organizations to use multiple cloud computing services from different providers to meet business and technical requirements. The potential benefit is greater flexibility, redundancy, and scalability than using a single cloud provider.

For example, a business might choose one provider because of its trusted database while using another for lower-cost storage or machine learning services. However, multicloud also introduces more complex networking, identity management, observability, and security controls.

Benefits of Multicloud

With the right planning, an organization can create a multicloud strategy that optimizes services, costs, and functionality while preserving the advantages built into its original architecture. A multicloud deployment takes careful planning, but it can deliver substantial benefits.

Here are some potential benefits of a multicloud strategy:

• Increased flexibility: Using multiple cloud vendors can make it easier for organizations to expand infrastructure as they launch products or services, enter new markets, or hire employees. Because they’re not limited to one provider’s portfolio, a well-planned multicloud approach can improve flexibility across the business.
• Reduced vendor lock-in: By using multiple cloud vendors, organizations gain greater choice. They can also more easily pilot new providers and evaluate services.
• Improved disaster recovery: When disaster strikes, a multicloud environment can help expedite failover by providing backup redundancy across different cloud vendors. This can reduce the risk of single points of failure through greater geographic reach.
• Optimized cost management: A multicloud environment allows organizations to pick and choose platforms and vendors, giving them a greater ability to compare prices and select the most cost-effective cloud for the task at hand.
• Enhanced performance and availability: Multicloud management allows organizations to optimize resource allocation among clouds for better performance. IT teams can also deploy critical business applications in multiple clouds running in parallel, so if one cloud becomes unavailable another can pick up the workload.
• Access to best-of-breed services from different providers: A multicloud approach gives organizations the ability to choose the offerings that best fit their needs.
• Greater geographic reach: Organizations that need data localization often find that multicloud configurations can better support data residency by providing services within specific geographies to address compliance, privacy, and technical requirements.
• Regulatory compliance:  With access to a broader choice of providers and specialized services, a multicloud strategy can make it easier to tailor security and privacy features to help meet specific regulatory and compliance requirements.

Key Challenges of Multicloud

While multicloud can be a useful approach, overlapping technology and distributed data can create challenges. The following are some of the most common:

• Complex management: Managing multiple cloud providers can increase operational complexity because no two vendors provide the same cloud management experience. APIs, connectivity, automation tools, and dashboards all come with vendor-specific interfaces, workflows, and nuances. To keep each cloud service running effectively, organizations need people who can work with each management dashboard and help ensure it integrates smoothly into the overall multicloud management system. In some cases, the vendor can help; in others, organizations may need to bring in a specialized service provider.
• Security and compliance: Achieving consistent security and compliance across clouds is difficult. Providers offer their own sets of security tools and services, often with different interfaces and functionalities. That can lead to reduced centralized visibility into an organization’s security posture, difficulties with data governance, inconsistent identity and access management, and other issues.
• Interoperability: Lack of integration between different cloud platforms can be a significant impediment. Issues may arise when each cloud provider has its own API definitions and gateways. Managing multiple gateways across environments increases complexity because separate configurations, certificates, and API keys may be required for each.
• Cost management: Each cloud platform comes with its own pricing model, billing practices, and usage metrics. Without consistent reporting, it can be difficult to get a comprehensive, apples-to-apples view of costs across providers.
• Data governance: Achieving data consistency, privacy, and control in a multicloud environment is complex because each cloud provider offers its own tools and policies for governing data.
• Vendor lock-in avoidance: Minimizing dependency on specific vendors is key to avoiding lock-in, but that can be challenging. CIOs evaluating a multicloud strategy often favor vendors that support integration through dedicated interconnection services or partnerships that facilitate data sharing and portability across offerings.
• Skill gaps: Multicloud environments present unique challenges because they require expertise across multiple platforms. While proficiency in individual cloud platforms is fairly common, cloud-agnostic expertise is less common. Companies may also struggle to find workers who understand the security and compliance implications of multicloud environments and who know how to manage data movement and integration across platforms.

To address these and other issues, organizations should invest in training and development programs or partner with cloud service providers that offer managed services.

Multicloud Management

When designing a multicloud architecture, it’s essential to consider data movement, network latency, and approaches to operations management, orchestration, and security.

• Consider data movement: Some applications and AI systems require access to data stored in on-premises databases or across other clouds. Moving data is relatively straightforward. Maintaining data security and establishing access controls that are at least as robust as those of the source system is more challenging. Data movement takes time and may incur egress fees.
  
  Many organizations may determine that moving data to new databases isn’t necessary. Instead, they can use the same database system across multiple clouds. This approach has become more practical through agreements that allow Oracle’s database services to run in the data centers of other hyperscale cloud providers.
• Minimize latency: Network latency directly affects application performance. Different applications and AI systems have different latency requirements. Some require microsecond-level latency, while others can tolerate latencies measured in double-digit milliseconds.
• Standardize operations management and orchestration: Each cloud may have its own set of tools and workflows, all requiring specific knowledge and expertise to support connectivity, troubleshooting, and management. Establishing standard practices and procedures for multicloud management across cloud platforms wherever possible is vital for success.
• Plan for security challenges: In a multicloud environment, disparate security tools and multiple cloud providers can result in more complex security operations and increased headcount, leading to higher costs and greater operational risk. A layered security strategy can simplify management by using built-in security services from each cloud provider along with partnerships between providers that support consistent management across environments.

Multicloud Use Cases

Organizations choose a multicloud architecture for many reasons. The use cases below show that the added complexity may be well worth the flexibility to deploy applications where they best meet cost, performance, and user proximity requirements.

• Disaster recovery: Replicate data and workloads across cloud providers so applications can fail over to an alternate environment when a provider, region, or service becomes unavailable.
• Business continuity: Keep essential services available by distributing application components across multiple clouds and avoiding dependence on a single provider. Multicloud connectivity and standardized operations can help maintain access to applications and data during outages, migrations, or other disruptions.
• Performance optimization: Place applications and databases in the environments that provide the best latency, scalability, and price-performance. One option is to use Oracle database services within another hyperscaler’s data center, reducing the latency and cost associated with moving large volumes of data between clouds.
• Best-of-breed service selection: Combine specialized capabilities from different providers—for example, Oracle database services with AWS application services, Azure analytics, or Google Cloud AI and Kubernetes services—rather than limiting an architecture to one vendor’s technology stack.
• Application and database modernization: Modernize front-end applications on one cloud while retaining or upgrading enterprise databases on another. Split-stack and single-stack designs allow cloud native development without changing critical data platforms.
• Data analytics and AI: Build cross-cloud data pipelines that replicate or stream operational data into analytics, data lake, and AI services. This can provide near real-time insights while allowing data to remain on the platform best suited for the workload.
• Regulatory and data residency compliance: Store and process information in appropriate geographic regions or deployment environments to address sovereignty, data residency, and industry requirements.

Multicloud Case Studies & Examples

Organizations of all sizes have used Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to deliver business value through these real-world multicloud case studies.

• Liantis, a workforce solutions company, supports the startup and growth of more than 225,000 self-employed entrepreneurs and 45,000 employers in Belgium. The company wanted to rearchitect its cloud disaster recovery environment to improve resilience and reduce costs. After migrating its disaster recovery environment from Oracle Database running on Microsoft Azure memory-optimized virtual machines to Oracle Exadata Database Service on Oracle Database@Azure, Liantis could access Oracle services through the native Azure experience. This multicloud architecture provides extremely low latency, resulting in faster response times, stronger security controls, and lower costs.
• Conduent delivers digital business solutions and services to more than 600 government and transportation agencies, including 6 of the 10 largest US toll systems in California, Florida, New Jersey, and New York. In total, Conduent processes nearly 13 million tolling transactions daily. The company wanted a cloud solution for one of its clients to improve transaction flows, minimize latency, and improve system resiliency. It migrated from a centralized on-premises deployment to Oracle Database@Azure. Because OCI and Oracle Exadata Database Service are deployed in Azure data centers, Conduent benefits from Oracle Database capabilities while developers enjoy a consistent Azure experience.
• TIM Brasil, a leading telecommunications firm, offers high-speed mobile and broadband services to more than 50 million people throughout Brazil. TIM chose a multicloud approach to modernize applications that directly affect the customer experience. It selected Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure to take advantage of OCI and Azure services. TIM migrated 8,000 workloads and 16 petabytes of storage to the cloud, reducing the time required to handle customer service inquiries by an average of 50%.

Multicloud Architecture

A multicloud architecture is born when an organization integrates cloud platforms or services from two or more providers. Sharing data between clouds is a common driver of integration. Depending on security, latency, and application requirements, integration can be as simple as defining access methods between cloud environments. When requirements for data security, consistent governance, and low latency are more stringent, organizations may need orchestration across clouds, typically enabled by agreements between vendors.

Regardless of the architecture, it’s generally best to design applications so that most data processing occurs within a single cloud provider’s environment.

How to Build a Multicloud Strategy in 7 Steps

A multicloud approach can improve the performance and availability of applications and AI systems, but it can also complicate application and data management, especially as infrastructure expands and the number of providers grows. Here are some best practices to consider when developing a multicloud strategy.

1. Plan for migration and integration: When possible, pick platforms that are ecosystem partners, such as Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and its close relationships with Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and Google Cloud. Also, develop strict operational and data usage protocols for your private cloud that rely on open standards. This makes it easier for the system to share resources across clouds.
2. Create a database strategy: Most organizations have developed a database strategy that revolves around one or two strategic products. Stick with your strategic database whenever possible, rather than using a vendor’s offerings. A bifurcated database strategy can complicate data management, making it difficult to maintain consistency and data integrity across environments. A simplified database strategy can provide AI systems with easier querying and analysis from all sources, providing a more holistic view of the information for AI outputs, reducing complexity, and supporting security and governance.
   
   A database strategy should consider how data will be used long term. Oracle AI Database customers can run their instances directly in the hyperscale clouds of their choice.
3. Investigate integration and automation services: As hyperscale cloud vendors forge partnerships, they’re also developing ways to help customers use their offerings across each other’s services. Some of the first partnerships have involved establishing high performance networking between public clouds as well as between public clouds and customers’ private clouds. Interconnection services can help reduce latency and may, depending on provider terms and architecture, reduce certain data-transfer costs.
   
   Multicloud orchestration systems can help IT teams manage each cloud from a single system. For example, organizations can use OCI for workload orchestration and deploy distributed Kubernetes or VM workloads on OCI, AWS, or Azure.
4. Support real-time data movement and management: Real-time data movement is increasingly important as AI systems draw data for analytics and decision-making. In a multicloud environment, APIs, data connectors, and automation tools enable data to be transferred and synchronized in real time across different clouds—helping keep important data up to date and accessible regardless of which cloud platform it’s stored in.
5. Set policies for API management and endpoint security: For cloud interconnectivity, it’s important to consolidate API endpoints and integrate identity and access management systems. This interconnectivity can introduce new security concerns, as services will be exposed to each other across multicloud environments, so organizations need to federate permissions across all systems involved for individuals and AI agents that need access to a wide range of data.
6. Focus on data security and compliance: Working with multiple cloud providers can introduce data security and governance challenges. Some applications, such as finance and HR apps, host sensitive data, while other systems, such as marketing tools, have less rigorous privacy demands. Create appropriate levels of access between applications with active monitoring across the entire multicloud environment.
7. Add monitoring and management tools: Monitoring and management tools are invaluable for managing the complexity of multicloud environments. They can provide a full-stack view of hybrid and multicloud applications and infrastructure, allowing for real-time monitoring, resource management, and automation. Many of these tools also include analytics that offer insights into resource usage that may help prevent performance problems and reveal ways to lower costs.

Accelerate Multicloud Deployment with Oracle

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) provides a broad set of multicloud solutions to run workloads where they’re required for compliance, performance, or proximity to end users. For example, you can deploy Oracle AI Database services in any hyperscaler, allowing you to combine the capabilities of AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, and OCI with your Oracle data to quickly build and improve applications.

Oracle also provides Universal Multicloud Credits, giving you a single point of contact to allocate cloud credits among your contracted providers for clear, predictable spend management—making it easier to use Oracle AI Database to support AI initiatives while reducing complexity, cost, and risk.

Multicloud FAQs

Why should a company adopt, or not adopt, a multicloud approach?

A company should adopt a multicloud strategy when it has clear requirements for resilience, compliance, or performance that are unmet by a single provider. A multicloud strategy also helps organizations avoid dependence on a single vendor, improve disaster recovery, and place workloads where latency, cost, and technical fit are strongest.

A company shouldn’t adopt multicloud simply for flexibility. It can add complexity across networking, identity, security, observability, and governance. The skills and resources needed to address that complexity can outweigh the benefits.

Why are businesses adopting multicloud strategies?

Businesses are adopting multicloud strategies primarily to improve resilience and avoid excessive dependence on one provider. A multicloud strategy can also help them meet regulatory and data residency requirements and place workloads where performance, cost, and specialized services are strongest.

What is an example of a multicloud strategy?

An example of a multicloud strategy would be a company that uses Amazon Web Services for its computing power and storage while using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for its AI services and data residency needs. This approach helps improve reliability by distributing workloads across different hyperscale platforms while also using the most cost-effective options. By employing a multicloud strategy, the company can harness the strengths of each provider, gaining greater flexibility and resilience in its IT infrastructure.

What’s the difference between cloud and multicloud?

Cloud computing uses internet-delivered infrastructure, platforms, or applications. Multicloud computing uses these services from multiple cloud providers. With a multicloud strategy, businesses can use the strengths of different platforms, optimize costs, and improve resilience by distributing workloads across environments.

What companies use multicloud?

Companies of all shapes and sizes in all industries use multicloud strategies. If you use two different cloud providers—even for basic tools and services, such as email servers or document storage in a shared drive—then you’re a multicloud shop. Enterprises often choose a multicloud approach for technical reasons, for cost reasons, or because they prefer to have more than one vendor partner. Using multiple cloud platforms can also speed up a company’s migration to the cloud and help IT teams move away from operating data centers.

Is multicloud a good idea?

For most companies, yes. A multicloud strategy can provide more customization and flexibility, whether an organization is fully in the cloud or splitting operations between on-premises and cloud environments. Compared with using a single cloud provider, a multicloud approach can give organizations greater freedom to select the features and services that best meet their needs.

Why is multicloud the future?

As more software and services move to the cloud, many organizations are likely to use multiple cloud providers. Cloud services are now embedded in data storage and backup, email servers, chat, and video collaboration tools. As these services become more central to operations, effective multicloud management tools and strategies become more important.