Whenever you went all-in on the cloud, you have been promised agility and financial savings. However typically, the fact feels very completely different. As a substitute of simplicity and suppleness, you’re going through greater payments, shrinking choices, and a single vendor with all of the leverage.
You’ve simply swapped one type of vendor lock-in for one more, and this lack of management may be extremely costly. Analysis from Flexera’s 2025 State of the Cloud Report signifies that C-level leaders estimate that 27% of all cloud spend yields no enterprise worth, typically wasted on idle or overprovisioned sources. It’s a value that’s nearly unattainable to get well once you’re tied to 1 vendor.
The issue isn’t the cloud itself; it’s the way it’s getting used. A deliberate multi-cloud technique restores management by placing you again accountable for the place and the way your information runs. It’s not simply “utilizing a number of clouds.” It’s constructing your structure for freedom, value predictability, and resilience.
The multi-cloud phantasm (and why most methods fail)
Most executives pursue a multi-cloud technique for 3 clear, bottom-line causes:
- Value management: To flee supplier markups and regain negotiating energy.
- Resilience: To mitigate the enterprise threat of a regional or provider-wide outage.
- Freedom: To keep away from vendor lock-in and run workloads the place they take advantage of sense.
Many organizations already imagine they’ve achieved that. They run workloads throughout AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud and assume that’s sufficient to assert independence. In actuality, that multi-cloud is commonly solely floor deep.
On the infrastructure stage, workloads are distributed. On the information layer, they’re nonetheless trapped. Purposes transfer simply between environments, however databases not often do. Proprietary managed providers promise comfort whereas quietly creating dependency by means of distinctive APIs, monitoring methods, and backup codecs that make migration gradual, costly, and dangerous.
That’s the phantasm behind many multi-cloud methods. The structure appears versatile from the surface, however the information itself is locked in. When your databases can’t transfer freely, neither can your corporation.
An actual multi-cloud technique begins by addressing that subject. True independence begins when your information layer runs persistently throughout clouds, in your phrases, with out vendor constraints.
Kubernetes: The muse for actual information portability
If proprietary providers are the entice, Kubernetes is the best way out. It offers a strategic repair by providing a constant, common platform for operating workloads wherever (public cloud, non-public cloud, or on-premises) with out requiring the rewriting of functions or the rebuilding of environments.
Whenever you run your database on Kubernetes, you summary it from the underlying {hardware} and cloud supplier. Your database is now not an “AWS database” or a “Google database”; it’s only a PostgreSQL or MySQL database that may run identically on any platform.
The outcomes communicate for themselves. In response to the 2024 Knowledge on Kubernetes Report, practically half of organizations now run 50% or extra of their information workloads on Kubernetes, and databases are the primary workload kind on the platform. The reason being easy: Kubernetes makes portability attainable.
When databases run on Kubernetes, they inherit the identical flexibility as functions. With Kubernetes Operators, advanced operational duties equivalent to backups, scaling, and failover may be automated and executed persistently throughout environments.
That is the place Percona is available in. Our open supply operators codify many years of database experience for PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB, offering enterprises with a single mannequin for automation, resilience, and efficiency, no matter the place their information resides.
The enterprise case: Open supply + Kubernetes = management
Each cloud technique ultimately comes down to 1 query: who controls the prices, the info, and the structure? Working open supply databases on Kubernetes offers that management again to you.
Proprietary Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) platforms sometimes incur a administration premium of 80 to 100% over the bottom infrastructure prices. Our current Take Again Management of Your Databases analysis paper reveals that comfort comes at a steep value, typically doubling spend for equivalent compute and storage. By operating open supply databases on Kubernetes, you remove the premium and change unpredictable billing with clear, usage-based prices.
The benefit can also be greater than monetary, as open supply databases on Kubernetes are absolutely moveable. There aren’t any license charges, no paywalled enterprise options, and no software rewrites required simply since you need to change cloud suppliers. This mix of open supply and Kubernetes delivers what executives anticipate from a multi-cloud surroundings: predictable prices, constant operations, and the liberty to determine the place information resides.
Turning technique into motion
Multi-cloud success begins with management, not instruments. It’s about making good choices that preserve prices predictable, guarantee resilience, and defend your freedom to decide on. Right here’s the place to begin:
Mandate portability. Require each new system to reply one query: Might we transfer this database in 90 days? If the reply isn’t any, it’s not really moveable.
Standardize on Kubernetes. Make Kubernetes the default, unified platform for all workloads, together with your stateful information. Consistency is what makes multi-cloud sensible at scale.
Prioritize open supply. Select vendor-neutral databases to maintain flexibility and forestall hidden licensing or characteristic restrictions.
Centralize visibility. Use a unified observability platform, equivalent to Percona Monitoring and Administration (PMM), to trace efficiency and spend throughout each surroundings.
Audit and goal waste. Determine your most costly proprietary database providers and consider their lock-in threat. These are the primary candidates for re-platforming.
A deliberate multi-cloud technique begins with these ideas. Every step ensures your structure serves your corporation, not your cloud vendor.
Management is the technique
Multi-cloud is about regaining management over your prices, resilience, and architectural freedom. Proprietary cloud providers make operations easy within the quick time period, however they create a dependence that limits your choices later.
Open supply databases on Kubernetes provide a unified, constant framework for operating your information wherever, with full transparency, no license limitations, and no vendor dictating how or the place you deploy. That’s the basis of an actual, sustainable multi-cloud technique.
To place this technique into movement, discover real-world approaches for decreasing cloud spend and constructing an information structure that you simply management end-to-end.
Learn our analysis paper, Take Again Management of Your Databases, to discover full TCO fashions and a step-by-step framework for constructing a future-ready information platform.
Try our webinar Working Databases within the Cloud: How you can Scale back Infrastructure Prices Utilizing Open Supply Parts and Kubernetes for tips about chopping cloud waste and enhancing effectivity.
