Valentine’s Day comes with a lot of relationship advice, like what red flags to watch out for.  A big red flag is getting locked-down. And if you feel trapped, that’s a problem.

Cloud strategy could use the same talk.

A lot of companies didn’t choose their cloud relationship so much as they fell into it. A team shipped fast, a service worked well, a migration started, and suddenly most of the business runs on one provider. It feels fine at first. Convenient, even. Until you realize how hard it would be to leave. 

That’s usually the moment people start describing their architecture like a long-term relationship they’re not sure how to get out of.

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The Red Flags Nobody Mentions in the Honeymoon Phase

Vendor lock-in is the classic control issue. You’re technically free to leave, but the “exit fee” is months of rewrites, risky migrations, and downtime no one wants to own. That’s not freedom. That’s inertia with a price tag.

Single-region dependence is another issue. If one region sneezes and your whole business catches a cold, that’s not resilience. That’s putting all your eggs in one very large, very distributed basket.

Then there’s portability. If performance drops or pricing changes, can you move? Not in theory — in practice. Many teams find out the honest answer is “yes, but it will hurt.”

And of course, pricing. Early cloud bills are charming. Later ones are… more complicated. Data transfer, API calls, AI workloads, cross-region chatter — the line items multiply. It’s less a bill and more a mystery novel.

None of this is evil. It’s just how incentives are structured. But it does mean you should go in with your eyes open.

What a Healthy Cloud Relationship Looks Like

A healthy setup doesn’t cause panic when things change. Portability means you can move workloads without rewriting your life story. It gives teams room to test, compare, and choose instead of just coping.

Multi-cloud resilience is more than just chasing buzzwords. It’s about not betting the company on one vendor’s best day. And true environment portability isn’t just a slide in a disaster-recovery deck. It’s the practical ability to recreate your workloads in another environment and have them behave the same way.

You’re not stuck. You’re deciding.

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The Part Nobody Likes to Say Out Loud

This isn’t about breaking up with hyperscalers. They build impressive technology and have earned their place.

The real issue is designing systems that don’t corner you later.

If your architecture only runs in one place, your negotiating power shrinks. If it can run in several, you have options. Engineers tend to do better when they have options. Less stress, fewer heroics, better decisions.

Funny how that works in both infrastructure and dating.

A Valentine’s Day Reality Check

Good relationships don’t rely on friction to keep people from leaving. They rely on value. Cloud should be the same. If you stay, it should be because it works well, not because moving feels impossible.

Valentine’s Day advice is usually simple: don’t ignore red flags early and hope they fix themselves later. The same applies to infrastructure. Design for portability and resilience early, and future decisions get easier.

And if your cloud really is a great partner, it should be confident enough to say you’re free to go.

That’s not anti-cloud.
It’s just pro-sanity.

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