Key takeaways
Identity and access management (IAM) is critical for securing multi-cloud environments.
Key challenges include growing costs, security complexity, and the need for specialized management expertise.
Multi-cloud offers flexibility, vendor choice, and improved resilience by distributing workloads across multiple providers.
Organizations should assess their security architecture before implementing a multi-cloud strategy.
Organizations are increasingly deploying and implementing cloud services to reduce the cost and complexity of their infrastructure while accelerating innovation. Many organizations take a multi-pronged approach: According to Flexera's 2021 State of the Cloud Report, 92% of enterprises have deployed a multi-cloud strategy, while 80% deploy a hybrid cloud strategy. The average organization uses 5.3 clouds—both private and public.
Multi-cloud offers key benefits such as flexibility, vendor choice, and improved resilience—but it also presents limitations, including rising costs, increased security complexity, and the need for specialized expertise.
In this post, we'll explore both sides of the multi-cloud coin, including its pros and cons—but first, let's define multi-cloud.
What is multi-cloud?
Multi-cloud refers to when an organization uses multiple cloud providers for its IT needs, enabling flexibility across private, public, and hybrid cloud environments.
This approach enables companies to better support their business, technology, and service reliability requirements, while mitigating overreliance on a single cloud provider that might not be able to handle all tasks effectively.
A multi-cloud strategy might encompass private, public, and hybrid clouds. This allows businesses to seamlessly manage multiple providers and virtual infrastructure performance for greater efficiency. Multi-cloud architecture distributes cloud applications, assets, and software—including infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS) solutions—across multiple environments.
Multi-cloud vs. hybrid cloud vs. private cloud vs. public cloud
There is often confusion around the differences between multi-cloud and hybrid cloud approaches and how private and public cloud solutions fit in. While private, public, and hybrid clouds are three distinct deployment models, multi-cloud refers to a combination of any of them.
Here's some more detail on how these cloud deployment models compare:
Cloud deployment models compared
| Cloud model | Infrastructure ownership | Key advantages | Key drawbacks |
| Public cloud | Third-party provider (e.g., AWS, Google Cloud) | Low cost, zero infrastructure maintenance, high reliability, and instant scaling | Shared multi-tenant resources, limited customization |
| Private cloud | Enterprise-owned or dedicated leased environment | Dedicated hardware, enhanced security control, and compliance flexibility | Higher upfront hardware costs and ongoing datacenter maintenance overhead |
| Hybrid cloud | A combination of private and public infrastructure | High operational flexibility, dynamic workload placement, and optimized cost control | Increased architectural complexity and management overhead |
| Multi-cloud | Multiple public and/or private cloud vendors | Avoids vendor lock-in, optimizes feature selection per cloud provider | Multi-platform governance complexity and potential security siloing |
Public cloud
Public cloud is the most common form of cloud deployment. Third-party service providers—such as AWS or the Google Cloud Platform—own and operate these resources and deliver them to users through the internet. The third-party cloud provider also owns and manages all hardware, software, and other infrastructure for its customers. Tenants share these resources and access them through web browsers. This includes access to web-based email, office applications, storage services, and development environments.
Public cloud offers a low-cost, highly reliable, and on-demand service that requires no maintenance for its users. It also provides quick time-to-value, meaning teams spend little to no time procuring infrastructure, collocating servers, or maintaining them.
On the flip side, you end up sharing resources with other tenants.
Private cloud
Private cloud deployment means an organization owns and maintains its cloud computing resources. These resources are stored at the organization's own data center—or, in some cases, companies rent private server space with a cloud provider. Alternatively, companies can opt for a pay-as-you-go solution for hardware collocated in their data center and managed remotely by a cloud provider.
The key advantage of this approach is that the organization stores resources on a private network, using dedicated hardware and software, enabling enhanced control, flexibility, and scalability for its IT environment.
A disadvantage of this model is that companies cannot fully realize pay-as-you-go benefits. They must pay for the infrastructure up front and cover ongoing maintenance regardless of usage levels.
Hybrid cloud
Hybrid cloud refers to the use of a combination of private and public cloud infrastructure. A hybrid cloud approach involves using orchestration tools to deploy workloads and balance organizations' resources across private and public clouds.
This approach also offers businesses more flexibility to move between these two models, depending on their needs and budget at any given time.
The one potential drawback, however, is that working with different cloud types can add complexity to your tech environment.
Note: Though it's often confused with hybrid IT, hybrid cloud specifically refers to using both private and public clouds. It doesn’t mean blending on-premises and cloud-based systems.
The benefits of multi-cloud
A multi-cloud approach offers organizations many advantages, from choice and flexibility to technical benefits.
Key benefits at a glance:
- Avoids vendor lock-in
- Enables best-of-breed service selection
- Helps meet compliance requirements
- Increases performance and reduces latency
- Enhances resilience and disaster recovery
- Improves flexibility and scalability
Seeking a perfect hybrid solution
Like many large organizations, Alliance Data maintained a complex IT infrastructure with a data center, on-premises solutions, and a VPN, but as the company grew through M&A, it required the agility and scalability of a cloud-based infrastructure. Alliance Data still needed to maintain some of its on-premises solutions, so it searched for an identity partner that could support and consolidate a complex hybrid infrastructure. Fortunately, Alliance Data found Okta.
Avoiding vendor lock-in
One of the most persuasive benefits of multi-cloud is that it keeps organizations from being locked into a single vendor or service provider. This freedom is increasingly important as organizations look to capitalize on niche, specialist providers that focus on specific expertise or cloud applications.
A multi-cloud approach enables businesses to deploy multiple specialist services instead of relying on a single vendor. This ensures companies can deploy the latest best-of-breed solutions and deliver the software employees need to work as effectively as possible.
Meeting compliance requirements
Increasingly stringent data privacy and governance regulations—such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)—require customer data to be stored in specific locations. Multi-cloud enables organizations to deliver this specificity without having to build and manage their own on-premises data centers or lakes.
Increasing performance
A multi-cloud approach helps organizations build high-speed infrastructure that maximizes application performance while reducing integration costs with existing IT systems. By extending networks to multiple cloud providers, organizations can develop connections that improve response time and user experience. Multi-cloud enables organizations to select cloud providers based on location and their ability to meet price and performance requirements.
Enhancing resilience
Outages can occur at any time with any cloud provider, making it highly risky for organizations to rely on a single vendor. A multi-cloud strategy offers businesses improved security, better failover options, and enhanced disaster recovery. It ensures data storage resources are always available, making the organization's cloud deployment more resilient for the long term. It also minimizes performance-affecting factors like latency, jitter, and packet loss, which hopping between networks and servers can easily cause.
Improving flexibility and scalability
With data volumes increasing exponentially, multi-cloud architecture is an ideal solution for organizations looking to store and process their data. It enables businesses to scale their storage requirements up and down as and when needed.
Multi-cloud challenges
Despite the widespread benefits of working with multiple cloud models and vendors, multi-cloud management isn't completely free of limitations.
Key challenges at a glance:
- Growing cloud costs from multiple providers
- Security complexity across environments
- Specialist management expertise required
- Legacy system integration concerns
- Data privacy and protection risks
Growing cloud costs
Multi-cloud is ideal for organizations wanting to work with the best and most recent cloud applications. However, signing up for and deploying to a growing number of cloud apps and service providers can result in an uptick in spending.
Rapid changes in arrangements
As organizations add new cloud apps, they risk losing control over their identity processes, access management, and security. Perimeter-based security tools are not built to secure and manage environments spread across multiple locations, and identity is paramount. Companies need to oversee and stay up to date on their cloud applications without drastically increasing spending on cloud management tools.
Specialist management expertise
Multi-cloud management requires specific expertise to ensure an organization's IT environment remains highly available and secure. If they aren't managed efficiently, multi-cloud environments can create significant issues for businesses, including increased costs and complexity.
Legacy security concerns
A significant challenge for many organizations that want to migrate to the cloud is integrating the cloud environment with their legacy systems. Multi-cloud strategies can stretch security architectures beyond their limits. Businesses need to assess their networks, environments, and security architectures before implementing multi-cloud to avoid potential risks and liabilities.
Data privacy and protection
Cybersecurity provides a significant challenge for organizations that store all their data on-premises. But housing it in various locations in multiple data centers and cloud environments makes protecting data even more challenging. Organizations need to provide seamless access to all of their cloud services, maintain least-privilege access across their cloud environments, and establish a robust identity architecture that federates with any application or service.
Getting multi-cloud management right
Multi-cloud management is crucial as organizations grow and add new applications and services to their IT environments. As the cloud revolution expands and data volumes increase, relying on traditional methods like passwords puts diverse environments, remote workers, and multiple applications at risk.
Businesses require a modern identity platform that makes the user the new perimeter, ensures secure access to applications and services, and enables rapid adoption. A Zero Trust security approach ensures:
- Context-based security
- Centralized identity control and reduced password mismanagement through single sign-on
- Protection of data through multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Automated user provisioning and deprovisioning
- Reduced IT overhead through automated workflows
The Okta Integration Network provides thousands of prebuilt integrations that enable customers to easily centralize user management, adopt the latest applications, and automate access workflows across cloud and on-premise environments—perfect for multi-cloud.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between multi-cloud and hybrid cloud?
Multi-cloud refers to using multiple cloud providers, including any combination of private, public, or hybrid. In contrast, a hybrid cloud specifically combines private and public cloud infrastructure.
What are the main security risks of multi-cloud?
Key risks include:
- Inconsistent security policies across providers
- Expanded attack surfaces
- Challenges in maintaining visibility and control over data spread across multiple environments
How do organizations manage identity across multiple clouds?
Organizations use centralized IAM platforms. These platforms provide SSO, MFA, and automated provisioning across all cloud environments.
Is multi-cloud more expensive than single-cloud?
Multi-cloud can increase costs due to multiple vendor contracts and management complexity, but it can also reduce costs through competitive pricing and optimized workload placement.
