But implementation taught me that ‘seamless’ and ‘simple’ aren’t the same thing. Each cloud provider had different APIs, security models and operational procedures. What we called ‘unified management’ still required teams to understand the nuances of multiple platforms. We solved the technical integration challenge, but we didn’t eliminate the operational complexity — we just centralized it.
Now, in my role as technical leader for F5’s BIG-IP management plane, I see the other side of that equation. I work with enterprises that have implemented these hybrid solutions and are struggling with exactly the operational burden we thought we had solved. They’re managing applications across multiple clouds, dealing with different load balancing requirements for each environment, and trying to maintain consistent security policies across platforms that were never designed to work the same way.
The F5 report’s finding that 94% of organizations deploy apps across multiple environments, with a median of four different public cloud vendors, isn’t just a statistic to me — it’s the daily reality of the enterprises I support. When I see that 79% have moved applications back from public clouds to on-premises, I recognize the disillusionment. The hybrid cloud flexibility we promised became hybrid cloud complexity that they couldn’t manage.
