Multi Cloud vs Hybrid Cloud: What’s The Best Choice?

85% of organizations consider cloud spending optimization to be one of their most relevant challenges. Given the ongoing demand for doing more with fewer resources, this development is unsurprising. With the complexity of tasks and prices growing, executives need to shape their strategy while optimizing their budget. As a result, they are re-examining their cloud strategies, looking for options to secure more flexibility, workload optimization, and cost-efficiency. Although hybrid cloud strategies are a prevalent choice among organizations, multi-cloud strategies have been gaining attention lately. Is there a point in making a switch? Which approach is better for building resilience? 

This article covers every question related to multi cloud vs hybrid cloud comparison, providing decision-makers and enterprise leaders with necessary context and insights from SMEs with first-hand hybrid multi cloud experience. 

What is hybrid cloud?

Hybrid cloud is a strategy within which enterprises use public cloud services with on-premise environments or private cloud, creating a system where every space is connected and information is shared. 

How does hybrid cloud work?

At its core, the hybrid cloud is a varied combination of different environments: private cloud, public cloud, and on-premise. However, this is not the only definition: hybrid cloud environments exist in large variety, that sometimes can cover a combination of several cloud environments from different providers without on-premise environments.  

Additionally, the line between private cloud and on-premise environments is extremely thin. There are differences, but they are very nuanced and specific, which is why people often consider private cloud and on-premise to be interchangeable terms.

Oleksandr Liubushyn, VP of Technology at Trinetix 

As a rule, public cloud/private cloud/on-premise ratio varies depending on the industry of the enterprise and its specific needs. For example, enterprises with tight security regulations get more benefits from private cloud, while public cloud is used for collaborative platforms and testing environments. Nevertheless, regardless of the ratio, a hybrid cloud architecture consists of several elements: 

Previously, hybrid cloud architecture was mostly used for resource distribution and scaling by migrating fragments of on-premise data to public cloud. Doing so required middleware, which is advanced software enabling connectivity between different environments. In other words, the purpose of initial hybrid cloud architectures was to enable physical connectivity. 

Nowadays, modern hybrid cloud architectures have shifted to maintaining workload distribution across the entire system, allocating workloads according to environment capabilities and enterprise needs. Automation also became a major part of today’s hybrid cloud strategies, enabling them to manage workload deployment. 

This change occurred because the view on cloud has changed. At first, cloud was used to build around on-premise legacy applications. However, now enterprises are going cloud-native, creating new services or evolving their existing ones. Within this change, they end up with an architecture consisting of many interconnected small components, each tailored to a specific service.

Oleksandr Liubushyn, VP of Technology at Trinetix 

Advantages of hybrid cloud

So far, hybrid cloud has been the go-to choice of organizations—and 90% of organizations are expected to adopt hybrid cloud strategies in 2027. The reason for this preference lies in the vast amount of benefits hybrid cloud unlocked for enterprises: 

• Steady legacy modernization
  An outdated legacy system takes around $40,000 per year to maintain and consumes half of IT department’s working time. At the same time, legacy modernization is a complex process that yet demands swiftness. Hybrid cloud allows executives and decision-makers to make a controlled and successful transition of legacy business data to private cloud via encapsulation, and lift and shift. As a result, legacy systems gain the reliability and scalability necessary for successful and efficient digital enterprise transformation. 

Of course, hybrid cloud strategy is not a silver bullet. The more outdated your legacy software is, the harder it will be to modernize, the more you will have to change or even build anew. Therefore, to make the most out of legacy modernization services, you need to react as soon as you discover the need.

Oleksandr Liubushyn, VP of Technology at Trinetix  

• Sensitive data management
  Enterprises operating in BFSI, Healthcare, or Government sectors have valid concerns about cloud migration—and most of these concerns revolve around data security. Within a hybrid cloud strategy, companies can safely store their most sensitive data either in private cloud or in their on-premise storage, while applying additional security measures. Hybrid cloud environments include data encryption, threat monitoring, and tight access control, ensuring that no third party will be able to compromise important enterprise information. 
  
  
  
• Uninterrupted business continuity
  As economic and geopolitical factors keep testing business landscapes, there is a growing realization of a direct connection between resilience and productivity. For example, 71% of high-performing enterprises were also the ones with above-average resilience indicators. Their preparedness for disruptions and readiness to invest in countermeasures allowed them to minimize risks and ensure their operations continue uninterrupted. Accordingly, building resilience and securing continuity should be the top-of-mind objective for organizations worldwide, which is where hybrid cloud strategy shines. By providing automated backup and disaster recovery, hybrid cloud environments safeguard enterprises from data loss and enable them to swiftly rebuild their structure and bounce back. 

Disadvantages of hybrid cloud

Albeit rich with benefits, a hybrid cloud strategy isn’t without its issues. The realization and maintenance of hybrid cloud environments has its pitfalls and so does enabling smooth data transfer between cloud and on-premise: 

• Challenging implementation
  While hybrid cloud facilitates workload distribution and resource allocation, implementing it is not an easy feat. Establishing connectivity between on-premise systems and private cloud environments can reveal numerous underlying issues and even increase the final cost of the transformation. Essentially, development teams need to identify how different environments should communicate and make sure that network connectivity is enough to support this communication. However, if legacy software hasn’t been updated in a while, this task will be more complicated and time-consuming than expected.
  
  
  
• Unforeseen expenses
  Despite being lauded for its cost-optimizing features, the realization of a hybrid cloud strategy can lead to unplanned expenses and resource consumption. These developments can emerge at every step of implementation, from initial phases to the period after deployment. For instance, a large amount of cloud environments communicating with on-premise systems lead to limited visibility for development and security teams. To negate this, technology executives need to invest in additional visibility software. In other cases, if outdated software modernization is involved, executives need to spend their budget on building a new cloud-based services.
  
  
  
• Management complexity
  From a technological point of view, hybrid cloud management is quite demanding. The more systems a company is running in such an environment, the harder it is to maintain stable data synchronization, integration, and security. In addition to these potential difficulties, there is also an issue with providing skills necessary for supporting hybrid cloud structures. Over 90% of companies will be lacking IT skills by 2026 – hybrid cloud administrative skills are expected to be among them. 

These challenges are the reason for Cloud Exodus, the pattern that sees enterprises withdrawing their data from public cloud infrastructure and shifting closer to private cloud or on-premise storage. While it doesn’t fully solve the matter of connectivity, it provides an opportunity to reduce spending on juggling several environments.  

What is multi cloud?

Multi-cloud is a practice that includes using offerings and capabilities from several cloud service providers. For example, an enterprise can utilize Google Cloud Platform for AI projects and work with Azure for computing.  

How does multi cloud work?

A multi-cloud strategy can include a number of different offerings—compute, AI/ML services, development tools, database management, and more. Investors select various services from different cloud providers based on their needs and preferences. Accordingly, one application can be supported by services from several cloud vendors, which allows enterprises to find the best capability possible for every specific application or function workload. 

What does a multi-cloud strategy look like in practice? Let’s say you want to host your email infrastructure in GCP, but you also prefer AWS for its storage offerings. At the same time, you want to leverage Azure CRM for your enterprise. Within a multi-cloud strategy, you can do just that. You can integrate all these services through middleware or APIs or monitoring tools, depending on your data security needs and governance requirements. However, it’s worth noting that if you need a complex and in-depth orchestration strategy, you need to work out an agreement between all cloud vendors.

Oleksandr Liubushyn, VP of Technology at Trinetix 

Within a multi-cloud strategy, environments are managed through their own dashboards and tools. It means that whenever the enterprise IT department needs to configure or monitor a process on either platform, it needs a separate set of instruments. Additionally, the IT unit also oversees the entire multi-cloud structure, checking for interoperability, functionality, and compliance with organizational policies. 

Advantages of multi cloud

In terms of advantages, multi-cloud provides the same benefits as hybrid cloud, but there are also several additional improvements that make multi-cloud particularly appealing to organizations: 

• Vendor lock-in prevention
  Staying in control of resources, expenses, and efficiencies is crucial for executives and teams—and vendor lock-in can sabotage this objective. Companies were documented to spend at least 20% extra on licenses and services because of their dependence on a vendor. The cases of vendors exploiting such dependencies through imposing fees and upgrades aren’t rare, which adds to the lock-in anxiety. Aside from financial loss, enterprises can also end up paying for their overreliance with missed time and opportunities. If their vendor’s services don’t provide scalability and agility, they need for growth, enterprise innovation initiatives become stifled, setting them back leaps away from their competitors. Multi-cloud allows organizations to negate that risk by providing a large variety of services and capabilities to work with and keeping their ecosystem centered around their business needs rather than the vendor’s goals.
  
  
  
• Shadow IT negation
  In 2025, use of unauthorized AI became the cause for 20% of enterprise data breaches. This is just one example of how shadow IT (the use of digital technologies not approved or owned by an enterprise) can jeopardize cybersecurity and business. Considering that the amount of machine digital identities (bots, AI agents, devices) has gone over 40,000 for every human digital identity—with the former being much more vulnerable to exploits—keeping enterprise structure shadow-free has never been more important. Leveraging a multi-cloud strategy provides companies with improved visibility on their environments, increasing their chances of detecting suspicious user behaviors or use of tools not certified by the IT department.
  
  
  
• Greater availability
  In 2024, 55% of data center operators faced an outage in the last three years. Although nobody is immune to force majeures or external factors such as blackouts, most enterprise clients have no tolerance for downtime. For that reason, many organizations strive to secure consistent system availability and uninterrupted performance. Multi-cloud provides that and more. In addition to enabling business continuity and boosting organizational resilience, multi-cloud allows organizations to accomplish more objectives by accessing several clouds and databases across the globe. As a result, companies become able to run more operations, handle more workloads, and achieve more in the same time. This advantage is extremely vital in the era when executives are expected to secure maximum efficiency and expand their reach while optimizing their spending. 

Disadvantages of multi cloud

Continuing the multi-cloud vs hybrid cloud comparison, a multi-cloud strategy has its downsides due to its complexity. Enabling interactions between multiple environments is challenging already—having to configure cloud services from different vendors only adds to the challenge and brings out a number of other issues: 

• Lack of integration
  Each cloud vendor comes with its own API protocols and gateways that require their own keys, certificates, and configurations. Due to this, establishing smooth interoperability between different systems becomes a complicated matter because teams need to juggle between different management routines, dashboards, and tools while adhering to vendor-exclusive requirements. Additionally, investors need to make sure they have experts with relevant cloud vendor skills that allow them to navigate environments efficiently. In some cases, organizations end up involving service providers for integrating and overseeing a multi-cloud infrastructure.
  
  
  
•  Cost balance
  While implementing a multi-cloud strategy offers a choice from different price offerings, the flip side is that every vendor has different pricing models, practices, and approaches to measuring usage. This is something investors need to take into consideration when planning their interactions with vendor services. There are also additional expenses, such as acquiring middleware, interconnection services, and visibility tools for monitoring multi-cloud infrastructure.
  
  
  
• Data consistency problems
  Every cloud service provider also has its own data governance practices. This factor complicates the task of enabling consistent control of data privacy and security. IT teams have to switch between vendor-specific security services and interfaces, which blurs their big-picture view of the entire system and the company’s overall security posture. As a result, the risk of access management problems, monitoring blind spots, and other issues increases. 

What is the difference between multi cloud vs hybrid cloud?

The thing is: there is no difference between multi-cloud and hybrid cloud. Moreover, multi-cloud is technically a variation of hybrid cloud. Enterprise multi-cloud structure can be integrated with on-premise systems: it has the same issues and challenges as hybrid cloud. The only difference is that multi-cloud uses several public cloud vendors.

Oleksandr Liubushyn, VP of Technology at Trinetix 

So, if hybrid cloud and multi-cloud aren’t exactly different strategies, but rather a strategy and its subset, what’s the point of comparing multi-cloud vs hybrid cloud? 

One of the main reasons for this comparison is to eliminate wrong assumptions and establish slight distinctions between these strategies—as well as to underline the complexities and challenges investors will imminently face when adopting or expanding their cloud infrastructure

It’s important to understand multi cloud vs hybrid cloud and eliminate any multi cloud vs hybrid cloud misunderstandings for the same reason it’s important to stop looking for silver bullets. Any solution chosen for the right goals and with the right preparation will work perfectly for the enterprise. The key to choosing right is in executives’ understanding of their business pain points, growth constraints, and long-term goals.

Oleksandr Liubushyn, VP of Technology at Trinetix 

Multi cloud vs hybrid cloud: Use cases

With multi-cloud vs hybrid cloud definition sorted out, it makes sense to identify what enterprises should base their choice of strategy on. From a logical standpoint, it’s more appropriate to call multi-cloud vs hybrid cloud “multi-cloud vs single cloud.” Ultimately, a multi-cloud strategy still includes working with private cloud and on-premise systems – therefore, when adopters need to make a viable comparison, they need to build on how many cloud environments their enterprise needs and why. 

Multi cloud use cases

When does an enterprise need a multi-cloud strategy? 

As a rule, the need for a multi-cloud infrastructure emerges when a company operates globally and, therefore, must provide consistent availability, run multiple workloads simultaneously, and transform as dynamically as possible. Accordingly, it’s possible to single out the following use cases: 

• Improved distribution for edge computing
  More cloud environments mean more opportunities to provide services in close proximity to end-users. Due to this, a multi-cloud infrastructure makes the perfect fit for edge computing, enabling real-time data processing and maximizing edge capabilities.
  
  
  
• Global coverage
  Since a multi-cloud strategy allows organizations to make the most out of edge infrastructure, they can leverage data centers closest to regions they work with. This allows them to deliver smooth user experiences, reduce waiting times, and ensure uninterrupted functionality regardless of location—all while staying compliant with location-specific regulations.
  
  
  
• Facilitated digital transformation
  Collaboration with multiple cloud service providers equips organizations with a diverse arsenal of tools and offerings for boosting digitization. In addition to enabling legacy system modernization, a multi-cloud strategy also powers companies with innovation, such as AI, helping them evolve efficiently and purposefully. 

Single cloud use cases

When does an enterprise need a single cloud strategy? 

Following the multi-cloud vs hybrid cloud comparison, a single hybrid cloud strategy is chosen by enterprises that aim to improve their resilience, hone their internal services, and enhance scalability. 

• Developing and testing applications
  Within a hybrid cloud strategy, DevOps teams get access to robust testing and development opportunities. They can operate with different environments for building and deploying apps and work with diverse tech stacks, building applications and functionalities in public cloud and then easily migrating them to private cloud.
  

• Efficient AI workload management
  AI adoption is one of the top priorities for enterprises—and it requires potent resources. A single hybrid cloud strategy offers these resources via agile environments, vast computing capacity, and ample storage. It also allows organizations to combine secure practices of their on-premise storages with the scalability of cloud services, getting the best of both worlds while minimizing risks
  
  
  
• Disaster recovery
  Last, but not least, a hybrid cloud becomes a valid countermeasure against data loss. Relying on on-premise physical data storage has proven to be not the most efficient disaster recovery plan – for instance, in case of a power outage or damage to enterprise hardware, the enterprise is unable to restore its access to valuable information. Meanwhile, storing data backups outside the enterprise allows companies to renew their business continuity safely.

Multi cloud vs hybrid cloud: How to identify the best fit?

The conclusion to the multi-cloud vs hybrid cloud comparison is that both strategies are mostly similar and have overlapping advantages and challenges. Accordingly, when enterprises plan and revise their cloud environments, they need to base their choice on long-term objectives, volume of work, and workplace-specific challenges. A standard decision-making framework on hybrid multi cloud experience usually has the following components: 

• Synergy with business goals
  Alignment with the enterprise journey roadmap is the main criterion for choosing a cloud strategy. For example, if an organization plans to operate across one region with specific data residency requirements, a single hybrid cloud strategy would be a good match. However, if a company has more global goals, plans to scale its services and engage new audiences, it will find more value in multi-cloud
  
  
  
• Data sovereignty concerns
  In the interconnected era, data security is the top priority, regardless of the industry and sector. When choosing between multi-cloud vs hybrid cloud, companies must focus on their private cloud environments and research vendors they intend to work with—from history of successful/unsuccessful data security cases to their approach to regulatory compliance and security practices.

In the case of data sovereignty, the devil is in the details. Technology is a powerful asset in protecting your valuable information, but it’s the strategy that provides safety. Whether you choose to work with multi-cloud or a single hybrid cloud, you must stay vigilant, continuously check in with your IT teams and vendors, and build a robust system of communication and information exchange.

Oleksandr Lyubusin, VP of Technology at Trinetix

• Budget brackets
  Before cloud can optimize costs, it will require considerable investment. To balance the CapEx ratio, executives need to consider financial nuances: the cost of vendor-specific spending, management costs, migration and maintenance costs, and more. Generally, a multi-cloud strategy will always require more investment due to complicated management and the demand for visibility tools. 
  
  
  
• Scalability considerations
  It’s important for organizations to choose the right cloud strategy for their high-demand period. A hybrid multi-cloud experience is usually a more preferable option since it allows for easier scaling and helps companies adjust to peaks in demand easily. Meanwhile, a single hybrid cloud offers fewer scalability options, especially for businesses that provide their services across several regions.
  
  
  
• Cloud technology expertise
  As mentioned above, cloud skill gap issues remain prevalent—and become particularly glaring when an organization wants to operate with multiple cloud environments. For achieving optimal outcomes and negating the risks, involving capable cloud technology consultants becomes a must. For that reason, forward-thinking enterprises work with digital transformation partners that provide experts and teams with the skill sets and knowledge needed. 

Once decision-makers know their priorities, business goals, long-term plans, and have their data security protection and partnerships worked out, they gain the confidence and insight they need to select a cloud strategy that meets their expectations. 

If you are currently revising your approach to cloud environments and in need of relevant cloud technology expertise and talent, let’s chat! At Trinetix, our experience in cloud enablement and cloud technology adoptions helped our partners elevate their performance and upgrade their infrastructure to levels that match their growth goals.  See what we can deliver for your enterprise within a detailed and knowledge-rich consultation with our capable SMEs.  

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