Multi-Cloud Strategy

Multi-cloud strategy isn't about using all clouds equally. It's about deliberately choosing the right cloud or even SaaS for each workload, balancing cost, performance, features, and compliance requirements.

Strategic Provider Selection

Hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud):

• ✓ Global reach and lowest cost for general workloads
• ✓ Broadest feature set and innovation
• ✓ Best for non-sensitive, globally-distributed data
• ✗ Not optimal for EU data sovereignty requirements

European Sovereign Clouds (OVHcloud, Scaleway, Hetzner, etc):

• ✓ Full EU data residency
• ✓ GDPR-compliant by design
• ✓ Eliminates CLOUD Act exposure
• ✓ Better for business-critical data and compliance
• ✗ Smaller feature set, when used as single provider

Hybrid Approach

EU clouds where possible - US clouds where needed:

• Store non-sensitive data with hyperscalers for redundancy/performance
• Deploy critical systems and EU citizen data on European clouds
• Replicate between EU providers for disaster recovery
• Result: Compliance + cost efficiency + resilience

Technology Enablers

Kubernetes abstracts the underlying cloud provider behind standardized container orchestration, enabling applications to run identically across hyperscalers or European clouds. Terraform provides cloud-agnostic Infrastructure-as-Code, enabling consistent provisioning across providers. Together, these eliminate vendor lock-in and enable portability.

Key Technologies:

• Kubernetes: Portable container orchestration across all providers
• Terraform: Infrastructure-as-Code for cloud-agnostic deployments
• Distributed storage: Replication and failover between clouds
• Centralized monitoring: Unified visibility across all environments

Governance Across Clouds

Managing multiple clouds requires centralized controls. Unified identity and access management ensures consistent authentication and authorization. Centralized security policies and compliance monitoring provide consistent control across all environments. Policy-as-Code prevents misconfigurations. Centralized logging enables visibility into security events regardless of provider.

Cost Optimization

Different providers charge differently for compute, storage, and data transfer. Load balancing and workload placement tools automatically route workloads to the most cost-effective provider at any time. However, this requires negotiating favorable terms with each provider based on your demonstrated ability to shift workloads elsewhere—a leverage point that single-cloud deployments lack.

Implementation Strategy

Organizations implementing multi-cloud strategies often follow a hybrid approach: using hyperscalers for non-sensitive, globally-distributed workloads, while deploying critical data and compliance-sensitive workloads on sovereign European clouds. This approach balances cost efficiency and feature breadth with compliance requirements and data sovereignty.