73% of IT Leaders Are Leveraging Two or More ‘Alt’ Cloud Providers

Over the years of covering the world of technology, I’ve preached about the perils of putting all your digital eggs into one basket, particularly when it comes to the cloud. It appears, according to our recent survey of 500 IT leaders, I’m not alone.

A whopping 88.8% of respondents said that an organization should never commit to one cloud provider for 100% of their architecture.

This approach reminds me of risk mitigation in the financial world. Any good financial advisor would recommend diversifying, splitting your retirement capital across various assets instead of just one stock or fund. The same holds true for tech: our survey shows a penchant for multiple cloud environments as a hedge.

I often assume that behemoths like Google and AWS dominate the cloud market, but it’s far more nuanced. Our data shows how the majority of organizations work with multiple cloud solutions. And it’s not just with “hyperscalers” like AWS, IBM, Google, and Azure. Many opt for alternative cloud providers, too.

Our findings on hyperscaler adoption:

• Almost 45% of respondents use two hyperscalers like Azure, Google, Oracle, IBM, or AWS
• Roughly 19% use three hyperscalers
• About 12% use even more — four or five hyperscalers
• A small portion, 2.9%, claims to use no hyperscalers at all

So, my initial theory was sort of right. The hyperscalers like Google and AWS certainly command a portion of the market, but there’s more to the equation. Our IT respondents either go for multiple hyperscalers (as shown above) or they turn to alternative cloud providers.

Our findings on alternative cloud adoption:

• Slightly more than 45% of respondents use two alternative cloud services
• Almost 20% use three alternative providers
• About 8% utilize four or more
• Only 7.93% of respondents claimed to avoid alternative cloud providers altogether

After seeing both sides of the situation, I’ve come to two conclusions. First of all, it’s a coin flip — IT leaders opt for alternative cloud solutions at similar rates as they do hyperscalers. Secondly, there’s a stronger pattern here. Multicloud adoption is becoming a standard operating model, not just a trend or exercise these leaders try to check off.

I’m seeing firm entrenchment in the multicloud model. Now the question is, how do you navigate all the complexities?

Here’s how I picture it: a CTO implements one or two hyperscalers like Oracle and IBM side-by-side, but they also turn to an alternative provider to avoid vendor lock-in and perhaps gain other features. But now they’re trying to secure multiple, diverse cloud environments. Each has its own native tools and settings, so wouldn’t that make for a security nightmare?

According to our survey, yes:

• Almost 73% of respondents stated “Yes,” they’re seeing real frictions when managing security for a multicloud environment
• About 27% responded “No,” suggesting they either haven’t experienced security complexities, or they found ways to mitigate the issues

Companies want to manage a multicloud infrastructure for its flexibility, cost savings, added features, and potential to avoid vendor lock-in. Yet, the vast majority then encounter security complexities. It’s a real concern, but luckily, 27% of respondents show that you can successfully navigate out of these constraints.

I’ve learned that IT professionals often avoid multicloud solutions because they’re already stuck with their current cloud vendor. That “vendor lock-in” causes real harm to the flexibility of an organization. Yet, our survey results may tell a different story.

• Roughly 45% of respondents said their cloud diversification plans ended or slowed due to vendor lock-in
• Almost 55% of IT leaders claim no barriers to diversification due to vendor lock-in

Those are promising numbers. Although I’m still worried that 45% of respondents are stuck with one vendor, the survey suggests it’s entirely possible to break free.

One thing I love about surveys is how they can produce solutions to problems. Take cloud vendor lock-in, for instance. Many IT leaders turn to multi-faceted approaches (contractual, technical, and operational), which appear more effective than a single tactic.

The best anti-lock-in strategies from our survey:

• Keep and maintain some of your workloads on-site: 60.5% of respondents
• Turn to cloud-agnostic systems: 53.8% of respondents
• Negotiate with providers for portability-centric contract terms: 50.9% of respondents
• Use middleware, or create abstraction layers internally: 41.8% of respondents
• Tap into containerization with Kubernetes and Docker: 37.9% of respondents
• No active strategies: 2.7% of respondents

I enjoy this layered cloud strategy because it points to a maturation in how IT professionals work with the hybrid cloud. They’re not only creating their infrastructure for one purpose or with one task in mind, but rather building optionality and flexibility into their architectures.

One of the questions we asked on the survey was “Which vendors are the most or least flexible when it comes to trying to move to another provider?” We had respondents rank the companies 1-5, with 1 being the company that is most flexible/accommodating and 5 being the provider that is the least flexible/accommodating. To me, this identifies the most flexible providers so that you avoid vendor lock-in.

Rankings (from most to least flexible):

1. Google Cloud, average rank of 2.5
2. Microsoft Azure, average rank of 2.6
3. AWS, average rank of 3
4. IBM Cloud, average rank of 3.3
5. Oracle Cloud, average rank of 3.6

So, if you’d like to ensure a smoother exit and/or more flexibility from your cloud service provider in the future, your peers are telling you to opt for Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure.

A critical part of any IT leader’s job is to negotiate favorable terms for cloud contracts. Luckily, I noticed surprising confidence levels in negotiating these contracts.

• About 42% of respondents said they’re “very comfortable” negotiating the spending on cloud services
• Roughly 39% said they feel “somewhat comfortable”
• We only saw 6.19% state they feel “very uncomfortable”

There’s no doubt that this points to a maturing marketplace, one where IT leaders have the expertise to choose the right cloud providers but also negotiate terms.

The days of being locked in with one cloud provider are behind us. This survey shows a systemic shift towards multicloud solutions, various options to avoid vendor lock-in, and confident IT leaders ready to negotiate with suppliers.