Organizations today are rapidly adopting cloud computing, yet reliance on a single cloud provider brings risks: vendor lock-in, limited service choice, and constrained agility. A well-designed multicloud strategy—using services from multiple cloud providers—is emerging as the preferred architecture to maximize flexibility, resilience, and best-of-breed functionality. This talk explores what multicloud means in practice, its benefits and challenges, how to architect it for success, and what operational disciplines are required to manage it effectively. Drawing from real-world examples and best practices, we’ll guide practitioners and architects in crafting and executing a multicloud strategy that delivers value across cost, performance, security, and governance dimensions.

By the end of this session, attendees will be able to:
1. Define what constitutes a true multicloud architecture (versus hybrid or single-cloud) and understand its business and technical drivers.
2. Articulate the key benefits of multicloud—flexibility, best-of-breed services, cost optimisation, resilience, geographical reach—and map them to real scenarios.
3. Identify the principal challenges of multicloud (complex management, security & compliance, interoperability, cost tracking, skill gaps) and propose mitigation approaches.
4. Outline a robust multicloud architecture and strategy: workload placement, data movement, orchestration, service integration, and vendor-ecosystem considerations.
5. Recommend operational and governance practices for successful multicloud deployment: monitoring, common tooling, API and identity strategy, governance, data-residency, cost-visibility.