Many companies today have contracts with multiple cloud providers. There are several reasons for this trend. The primary reason I hear is that companies don’t want to be locked into just one cloud provider and become 100% dependent on it. Additionally, they want to leverage the unique features and strengths of different cloud providers and be prepared for unforeseen events, such as a service from one provider being shut down on short notice. However, the investment required to technically maintain multiple cloud providers and make them accessible on demand to their developers is significant. This expenditure can reduce a company’s ability to innovate and drive the development of its core products. Being locked into one cloud provider might be the least of a company’s concerns if it can’t keep up with the pace of innovation of its competitors. This article presents a people-centric approach to multi-cloud, showing how to stay competitive and leverage multiple cloud providers’ strengths simultaneously.

Following a strategy of delivering high-quality software faster, traditional companies in any industry struggle to catch up and accelerate. Many traditional companies improve yearly in delivering high-quality software. However, digital-native companies still have the ability to accelerate faster, making it nearly impossible for traditional companies to overtake them.

Giving software developers the option to choose between cloud providers involves investing in setting up and maintaining multiple cloud environments. These environments must meet the company’s security, compliance rules, regulations, and best practices. For example, a microservice runtime like Kubernetes might need to be maintained multiple times, or a VPN connection to a company-owned data center might need to be set up and maintained multiple times. All of this comes at a cost of time and money.

Considering the bigger picture, many companies are better off going all-in with one cloud provider as their initial (multi)-cloud strategy. Reducing complexity allows developers to focus on the core business, driving innovation and speeding up software development. Companies that worry too much about future vendor lock-in may miss out on new market opportunities their competitors are pursuing. Being prepared to switch easily between cloud providers does not prevent a company from becoming irrelevant.

Some companies focus on providing what they believe are the right tools for their developers to thrive and create business value. However, I propose turning the focus to the developers themselves. Developers typically know best how to achieve their tasks when they have clear and measurable goals. Companies should listen to their developers, remove roadblocks, and provide them with the freedom, time, commitment, and learning opportunities they need.

A concise multi-cloud strategy could be:

ACME Corp (Multi)-Cloud Strategy

We don’t invest time and resources in preparing for a vendor lock-in scenario with a fully integrated multi-cloud setup. Instead, we focus on enhancing our teams’ software delivery performance. Besides mitigating the risk of optimizing for a problem that might never occur, we can react to market changes much faster. Adopting a new cloud provider is one option we have in our portfolio.

We measure our software delivery performance using the four key metrics described in the book Accelerate. We improve step by step, working on mastering the 24 capabilities outlined in the book.

To emphasize the importance of focusing on developers and their productivity, consider this example: Suppose a company needs to switch cloud providers due to a price increase. A company that previously focused on creating an integrated cloud platform across multiple vendors might feel that their upfront investment is paying off. However, if this company did not invest in the continuous training and learning of its development teams, their skills may not be suited to seamlessly transition from one cloud provider to another. Additionally, these teams might struggle to adapt and learn how the new cloud provider operates.

In conclusion, let’s compare the approaches of two companies: The first company went all-in with one cloud provider, focusing on developing its developers’ hard and soft skills. As a result, its developers can more easily learn the new cloud platform, plan, and make decisions on how to migrate applications from one cloud provider to another. The second company focused on creating a platform that integrates multiple cloud providers but did not invest in its developers’ continuous learning and skill improvement. Now, this company faces the challenge of having a tool that can speed up the transition from one cloud provider to another, but its developers lack the necessary skills to operate on the new cloud platform and struggle to learn and adapt to the new environment.