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Multiple Clouds or Multicloud? Understanding the Key Differences

By Nicholas Holian, Worldwide Field CTO, Nutanix

January 27, 2025 | min

The terms “multiple clouds” and “multicloud” are often used interchangeably, but they represent distinctly different approaches to cloud strategy. This post, the first in a series of three, will clear up the confusion by defining the two terms and laying out their distinct advantages and disadvantages. The next article will explore practical steps businesses can take to transition from a fragmented multiple cloud approach to a fully integrated multicloud environment. The final post in this series will dive into best practices for optimizing workloads across a multicloud environment.

It's hard to overstate just how radically cloud computing has transformed the way we do business today. No other operating model offers the kind of ease and flexibility that allows you to get needed resources at the push of a button. In fact, hybrid and multicloud environments have become the de facto infrastructure standard, according to the 2024 Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index Report.

In the IT space, the use of multiple clouds is often referred to as a multicloud architecture, but in reality, multiple clouds and multicloud are not the same thing. While it might seem a simple matter of semantics, there’s a vast difference between the two concepts.

This article looks at those differences and focuses on how one approach – multicloud – can help you achieve your business and IT goals efficiently and effectively, and how the other – multiple clouds – can create challenges that could leave you struggling to compete in your marketplace.

First, Some Definitions

Multiple clouds

When a company uses multiple public cloud providers independently – typically for different use cases, workloads, or business units – that is a multiple cloud architecture. It is also sometimes called a “poly-cloud” or “native cloud” approach. The cloud environments operate in isolation with limited integration or portability between them.

It’s also not simply a matter of having workloads with different cloud service providers. Many organizations have multiple instances in each of those clouds – where even two workloads on the same platform could be siloed and work independently.

Then there are organizations that have virtual private clouds, on-premises clouds or co-located clouds. These all contribute to the siloed multiple cloud issue and can make management and operations extremely complex.

An example of multiple cloud architecture would be a company that keeps critical applications and data in a private cloud and then runs its financial applications on AWS, stores customer data in Microsoft Azure, and uses Google Cloud Platform (GCP) for machine learning and data analytics.

The systems are largely siloed, requiring the organization to manage each cloud environment separately, including such tasks as scaling, securing, chargeback, backup, and overall operations.

Multicloud

Multicloud architecture is a more modern approach to IT and refers to a cohesive, integrated environment that spans multiple private and public cloud platforms that you can manage as a single, unified environment.

Workloads and data move seamlessly across different clouds, allowing you to choose the right cloud for the right job to optimize performance, cost, and compliance. It’s more than simply using multiple clouds; it’s managing all your different cloud environments as a single platform.

An example of the multicloud approach would be a global enterprise that uses a combination of private cloud, AWS, Azure, and GCP, moving workloads and data freely between them based on real-time factors like cost, performance, and regulatory needs.

This requires a unified platform that provides seamless interoperability, consistent management, and robust security across all environments, enabling the enterprise to optimize operations while maintaining compliance and meeting performance goals. Data flows securely from one environment to the next and IT can manage it all from a single management layer.

The Many Challenges of Multiple Clouds

While the use of multiple clouds may have been an effective solution in the short term, it often introduces several challenges over long-term use. These include:

Inefficiencies in workload management and siloed IT teams

With clouds operating independently, managing workloads across different platforms can lead to duplication of efforts. You might need completely different teams – different skillsets, for sure – to track and manage separate environments.

Beyond the obvious overhead costs and complexity, this can lead to increased time in issue resolution if a workload has different components in different clouds or accesses data in a different cloud. Troubleshooting across or between clouds can become a nightmare with siloed support teams and resources and ultimately lead to higher mean time to repair (MTTR).

Scalability limitations

Scaling across different cloud platforms that don’t communicate with each other can limit your ability to rapidly pivot or respond to fluctuating trends or internal and external customer needs. Each cloud has its own set of tools and processes for scaling, which can create inefficiencies when workloads need to move between environments.

Cost optimization challenges

Without a unified view of all cloud costs, it’s difficult to optimize spending across multiple platforms. For example, one cloud might be more cost-effective for storage, while another might offer better compute resources. But if you can’t move workloads between them, you’re locked into suboptimal cost structures.

Lack of data portability

Since clouds operate in silos, it’s often difficult to move data between them. This lack of portability can complicate disaster recovery, compliance and backup strategies. It can also negatively affect business continuity in times of system failures, curtail resiliency in operations, and reduce flexibility to meet your customers’ needs – especially during peak usage periods.

Security and compliance risks

Managing security and compliance across multiple platforms that have different policies, tools and processes increases the complexity of maintaining standards. For instance, some governments are beginning to mandate that a company’s workloads can’t be stored on one single cloud platform. Without a unified security posture, organizations may find themselves vulnerable to breaches or out of compliance.

In summary, multiple clouds can complicate operations and lead to great inefficiencies. They limit you in ways that can seriously affect your ability to serve customers, your revenue potential and future growth.

Most Companies Have Multiple Clouds: How Did We Get Here?

To understand why so many organizations are operating in a multiple cloud environment, we need to look at early cloud adoption.

Platform choices were often driven by individual business units or specific needs, such as migrating certain applications from traditional on-premises datacenters to the cloud to meet specific regulatory requirements.

Cloud providers also tended to specialize in the services they offered. For instance, if you wanted to do data analytics, GCP was a good choice. If you had a Microsoft workload, you might be more inclined to put it on Microsoft Azure.

In the early days of the cloud’s growing popularity, many organizations were eager to embrace the hype and promptly instituted “cloud first” policies. That led to the migration of vast numbers of workloads to the public cloud without much strategic thought or a deep understanding of the impact on performance, cost or reliability over the long-term.

The decision of which platform to use was often driven by which hyperscaler your organization already had a relationship with or who was offering the best financial incentives at the time.

Shadow IT, in which employees purchase cloud services on their own without consulting IT, also helped create a multiple cloud ecosystem made up of disparate cloud environments that don’t work together well. Each one must be managed and maintained separately, often inherited by IT at some point when the business needed scale or security or compliance.

It’s important to recognize that adopting multiple clouds was, for most organizations, a pragmatic choice at the time. Each cloud provider offered compelling services that could fulfill specific needs. The technology simply wasn’t mature enough and best practices around multicloud integration – including integration with on-premises infrastructure and private clouds – hadn’t been clearly defined.

If this sounds like your organization, take comfort: You’re not alone. This approach was common as organizations explored the potential of different cloud offerings. The next logical step now is to take stock of your existing cloud infrastructure and begin the journey toward a more integrated, optimized multicloud strategy.

Benefits of Integrated Multicloud Architecture

Adopting a true multicloud strategy can help resolve many of the issues associated with multiple clouds. Here are just a few of the key benefits:

Flexibility and optimization

A multicloud approach allows you to intelligently place workloads and other data in the right cloud platforms, ensuring that resources are allocated optimally and can be efficiently adjusted as needed.

This means running data-intensive workloads on the cloud best suited for them, while using a different cloud for compute-heavy tasks. When business needs, budgets or cloud costs change, you can move workloads around easily to continue to optimize based on performance or cost levers.

Seamless integration

By integrating multiple clouds into a single management layer, you can break down the silos that restrict performance and data flow. This ensures workload portability, seamless communication between environments and better capabilities to optimize as your business needs evolve.

Scalability and performance

A multicloud approach allows for dynamic scaling across clouds based on workload demand. If a workload requires more resources, it can be moved to the cloud that best suits its needs at that moment, known as bursting. Similarly, you can respond more dynamically and effectively to customers if their needs shift and a different cloud provider or edge location is better suited to accommodate them.

Cost control

With integrated management, you can take advantage of pricing models across different clouds to reduce costs. The ability to move workloads between clouds also allows you to take advantage of discounts, eliminate microwaste due to overprovisioning and optimize resource usage.

Enhanced security and compliance

By managing multiple clouds from a single control plane, you can apply consistent security policies and ensure that data movement between clouds complies with internal security policies and regulatory requirements.

The Future of Cloud Strategy Requires a Multicloud Approach

The cloud landscape is evolving rapidly, and businesses that continue to operate in multiple isolated cloud environments risk falling behind. As the complexity of cloud ecosystems grows, it will only become more critical to implement a unified approach. True multicloud environments provide the adaptability and futureproofing that you need to stay competitive in an ever-changing market.

Implementing a multicloud strategy is a big decision and comes with its share of challenges. Beyond developing a unified security posture and finding people with the skillsets to deploy and configure it, organizations must also tackle issues such as ensuring seamless interoperability between different cloud environments, managing disparate tools and interfaces, and maintaining consistent performance and availability across platforms.

Additionally, monitoring and controlling costs in a multicloud setup can be complex, as workloads shift between providers and pricing structures vary. Despite these hurdles, the potential benefits of a multicloud approach – such as improved efficiency, flexibility and scalability, along with enhanced cost savings, security and compliance – make it a worthwhile transformative investment.

As technology and customer needs continue to evolve, embracing multicloud positions your organization to adapt quickly to shifting demands, unlocking new opportunities for innovation and growth.

In our next installment, we’ll look at how to make multicloud a reality and what it takes to move from multiple siloed clouds to true multicloud. Stay tuned!

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