Many organisations have adopted a multicloud strategy that spans multiple cloud providers. However, in practice, many remain effectively locked into individual providers, lacking the practical capability to migrate workloads between clouds or to exit a provider entirely.
All too often, a defined cloud exit strategy is missing, and the impact of vendor lock-in only becomes clear when change becomes necessary.
Defining portability before migration
We believe that organisations should proactively define the required level of application portability before migrating to the cloud.
Portability can exist across a spectrum:
- Full portability means an application can run across multiple clouds simultaneously and can exit a provider in real time without loss or disruption.
- Partial portability is when an application can be moved between providers within a defined timeframe (for example, within several months).
- Minimal portability occurs when, if there’s an exit, an application will be decommissioned rather than migrated.
There are many viable positions between these extremes. The critical step is to have a clear, documented and approved strategy for each application that aligns with the business.
Proving portability in practice
Where a strategy includes any degree of portability, we help clients build and test Stressed Exit and Managed Exit plans, validating that portability works in real-world conditions.
- Stressed Exit: This demonstrates that, with sufficient time, an organisation can move an application from one cloud provider to another. This involves defining a migration roadmap and performing controlled test migrations to validate readiness and capability.
- Managed Exit: This scenario demonstrates that an application can be actively operated and migrated between providers while maintaining continuity of service across environments. For instance, in our demonstration environments, we have developed payment applications that run concurrently across multiple clouds, where users can be migrated seamlessly from one provider to another without any loss of transactions, after which the original environment can be decommissioned.
The case for an open cloud strategy
If cloud portability and digital independence are important to your organisation, then adopting an Open Cloud strategy is essential.
An Open Cloud ecosystem is built on open standards, open APIs and open-source technologies that promote workload portability, interoperability and digital sovereignty.
The five pillars of the open cloud
- 1. Interoperability: Workloads and data move freely across clouds.
- 2. Transparency: Open APIs, open governance and no hidden dependencies.
- 3. Portability: Open formats and architectures that prevent vendor lock-in.
- 4. Sovereignty: Organisations retain full control of their data and operations.
- 5. Community innovation: Built upon open-source ecosystems and shared development.
The cloud on your terms
Multicloud without transparency and portability is liable to incur lock-in scenarios. An open cloud approach can transform that model and create flexibility, control and freedom, ensuring your cloud strategy serves your organisation, not the other way around.