Why multi-cloud platforms might disappoint

In today's tech landscape, multi-cloud platforms (MCPs) have emerged as the supposed silver bullet for organizations looking to harness the power of multiple cloud providers while avoiding vendor lock-in. Yet beneath the glossy marketing and ambitious promises lies a more nuanced reality that many enterprises are only discovering after significant investment. As Henry Mao of Smithery argues in his recent presentation, MCPs might be solving the wrong problems while creating new ones along the way.

The core challenge with multi-cloud platforms

Henry Mao's presentation cuts through the hype surrounding multi-cloud platforms with several thought-provoking arguments:

• MCPs don't truly solve vendor lock-in – While they promise freedom from dependence on a single cloud provider, they actually create a new form of lock-in to the MCP itself, which often comes with its own proprietary abstractions and limitations.

• The abstraction tax is substantial – By creating a layer that works across multiple cloud environments, MCPs inevitably sacrifice native cloud capabilities, performance optimizations, and introduce additional complexity that requires specialized expertise.

• Focus shifts from business value to infrastructure – Organizations adopting MCPs often find themselves dedicating significant resources to managing the platform itself rather than delivering actual business value through their applications.

• Cost savings rarely materialize – Despite promises of optimizing costs across providers, the reality is that the additional complexity, specialized skills required, and abstraction overhead frequently outweigh any theoretical savings.

Why this matters: The hidden consequences of abstraction

The most insightful takeaway from Mao's analysis is how MCPs fundamentally misunderstand the core challenges of modern cloud development. Rather than enabling teams to work more efficiently, they often introduce what he calls an "abstraction tax" that compounds over time, creating technical debt that becomes increasingly difficult to manage.

This matters tremendously because we're at an inflection point in enterprise IT strategy. With cloud spending continuing to accelerate—Gartner forecasts worldwide public cloud spending to grow 20.7% to $591.8 billion in 2023—organizations are making decisive architecture choices that will impact their operations for years to come. The wrong abstraction doesn't just impact engineering efficiency; it creates strategic limitations that can hinder business agility and innovation at