The power of multi-cloud: unlocking strategic flexibility, cost efficiency, and full control

In recent years, the adoption of a multi-cloud strategy has increased significantly. According to Microsoft’s 2024 State of Multicloud, the majority of organizations now follow a multi-cloud approach, driven by benefits such as increased flexibility and freedom of choice. Leading companies like State Street, which uses both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure for its cloud infrastructure, as well as Netflix, BMW, and Walmart, all embrace a multi-cloud strategy.

This trend highlights the growing importance of a multi-cloud approach. In this blog, we discuss why organizations are shifting to a multi-cloud strategy. We also show how Harborn optimally applies multi-cloud in their managed, cloud-agnostic solution, helping businesses combine multiple cloud providers and optimize costs.

Vendor Lock-In

Companies leveraging the cloud enjoy benefits such as cost savings, scalability, and flexibility. The use of a single cloud provider, such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, initially provides a clear infrastructure in which all services are centrally available. This makes it easy to choose the specific cloud services of a single provider, as it accelerates time-to-market and allows for rapid scaling through numerous managed services with limited specialist knowledge.

However, these advantages can also lead to certain drawbacks. As a company further digitalizes or migrates to the cloud, its dependence on a single cloud provider increases. This is known as vendor lock-in – being tied to the tools, pricing, and terms of a single cloud provider. But what happens if costs rise compared to competitors, switching becomes complex and expensive, a crucial service is discontinued, or the provider goes bankrupt?

Multi-cloud offers the solution. It means businesses are not tied to a single cloud provider but can relatively easily migrate their infrastructure and applications between different providers. This increases flexibility, provides more control, and helps mitigate risks.

One of the main benefits of this approach is that it prevents vendor lock-in. By not being reliant on one cloud provider, companies have the freedom to migrate or expand their infrastructure and applications without being tied to the tools, pricing, and terms of a single vendor.

Additionally, this cloud-agnostic strategy helps mitigate operational risks. Since workloads and data can be easily moved between environments, businesses are better protected against outages, data loss, or cyber-attacks. If a cloud provider goes down or imposes unfavorable terms, the infrastructure remains operational with another provider.

Challenges of Multi-Cloud

While multi-cloud offers many benefits, it also comes with challenges. How do you manage multiple clouds without unnecessary complexity? Each provider has its own unique services, management tools, and pricing models, which can lead to a complicated infrastructure. This can result in higher costs due to a lack of visibility into spending across per provider.

Moreover, multi-cloud can introduce security risks. Each provider has its own access rules, policies, and standards. This increases the risk of data breaches and makes it complex to comply with regulatory requirements.

Furthermore, multi-cloud can cause unnecessary management complexity since each cloud provider requires different configurations and integrations. To truly benefit from multi-cloud, an efficient management approach is essential.

Multi-Cloud in Action

This is where Harborn comes into play. Harborn has developed a solution that provides companies with a managed, cloud-agnostic multi-cloud approach. This enables them to leverage multiple cloud providers flexibly and cost-effectively. For example, AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) and Azure AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) – both managed Kubernetes services – can be managed within a single central interface without the need to log in separately to each cloud provider. This provides clarity, simplifies management, and reduces operational complexity.

Harborn builds on this concept, with a strong focus on cost optimization. Without the right strategy, multi-cloud costs can quickly escalate. Harborn helps businesses maintain control over their costs by reducing waste and shifting workloads to the most cost-efficient cloud provider, without impacting performance or availability. For instance, organizations can take advantage of significant cost savings by migrating their SQL Server workloads from AWS to Azure.

The Result? Lower costs, reduced complexity, and maximum flexibility – without compromising performance or availability.