--- title: "The Dark Side of Multicloud: how to prevent workload placement from generating technical debt" description: "Workload placement nel multicloud: come evitare cloud sprawl, debito tecnico e costi fuori controllo attraverso policy strutturate." image: https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/hubfs/test5.webp --- [kireygroup.com](https://www.kireygroup.com/) [![](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/hubfs/item-2020-dicembre/logo-Blog-v2.svg)](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news) - [Ita](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/news/il-lato-oscuro-del-multicloud-come-evitare-che-il-workload-placement-generi-debito-tecnico?hsLang=it) - Eng - [Esp](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/es/news/el-lado-oscuro-del-multicloud-como-evitar-que-el-workload-placement-genere-deuda-tecnica?hsLang=es) [Kireygroup.com](https://www.kireygroup.com/) # Get your daily dose of tech! ## We Shape Your Knowledge # [The Dark Side of Multicloud: how to prevent workload placement from generating technical debt](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/the-dark-side-of-multicloud-how-to-prevent-workload-placement-from-generating-technical-debt) According to the Flexera 2026 State of the Cloud Report, 88% of organizations use a multicloud strat... [Read more](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/the-dark-side-of-multicloud-how-to-prevent-workload-placement-from-generating-technical-debt) 9 MIN READ 5 October 2026 ### Latest News - [The Dark Side of Multicloud: how to prevent workload placement from generating technical debt](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/the-dark-side-of-multicloud-how-to-prevent-workload-placement-from-generating-technical-debt) - [Shadow AI: 4 out of 5 employees use tools not governed by the company](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/shadow-ai-4-out-of-5-employees-use-tools-not-governed-by-the-company?hsLang=en) - [Legacy modernization in banking: discover the true cost of legacy systems](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/legacy-modernization-in-banking-discover-the-true-cost-of-legacy-systems?hsLang=en) - [Context Engineering, the art and science behind AI Agents](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/context-engineering-the-art-and-science-behind-ai-agents?hsLang=en) - [Agentic AI Governance: how to effectively manage AI that can act](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/agentic-ai-governance-how-to-effectively-manage-ai-that-can-act?hsLang=en) - [Autonomous SOC: reality, limitations, and prospects for AI-driven security](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/autonomous-soc-reality-limitations-and-prospects-for-ai-driven-security?hsLang=en) - [Cloud](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/cloud) / # The Dark Side of Multicloud: how to prevent workload placement from generating technical debt #### Kirey [![](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/hubfs/it.svg)](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/news/il-lato-oscuro-del-multicloud-come-evitare-che-il-workload-placement-generi-debito-tecnico?hsLang=it)    [![](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/hubfs/ES.svg)](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/es/news/el-lado-oscuro-del-multicloud-como-evitar-que-el-workload-placement-genere-deuda-tecnica?hsLang=es) 9 MIN READ 5 October 2026 - Share on: - - - - [All](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/news?hsLang=en) - Categories + - [Corporate](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/corporate) - [Cybersecurity](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/cybersecurity) - [Events/Webinars](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/events-webinars) - [Cloud](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/cloud) - [Data Value](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/data-value) - [Innovation](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/innovation) - [Artificial Intelligence](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/artificial-intelligence) - [Monitoring](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/monitoring) - [DevSecOps](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/devsecops) - [Software Development](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/software-development) - [Corporate Social Responsibility](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/corporate-social-responsibility) - [Data Privacy](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/data-privacy) - [Advisory](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/advisory) - [Accessibility](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/accessibility) - [Automation](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/automation) - [Digital Banking](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/digital-banking) - [Digital Industry](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/digital-industry) - [Use case](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/use-case) - [Welfare & Social Services](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/welfare-social-services) - [Press & PR](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/tag/press) According to the [Flexera 2026 State of the Cloud Report](https://www.flexera.com/de/about-us/press-center/cloud-entwickelt-sich-vom-kostenfaktor-zum-werttreiber), 88% of organizations use a multicloud strategy, while 73% operate in hybrid cloud environments. Multicloud often stems from a strategic choice: **using the most suitable provider for each workload, increasing resilience, and reducing vendor lock-in.** In other cases, however, it emerges over time as a result of acquisitions, teams making independent choices, and layered architectures, with an inevitable increase in management complexity. Here, we are discussing **workload placement optimization in multicloud environments**, i.e., how to decide where to **place applications, data, and services when a company uses multiple providers**. This is far from a trivial decision, because choices made without a strategic approach can increase not only complexity, **but also TCO and technical debt.** Key Points - Multicloud offers **flexibility and resilience**, but increases the complexity that needs to be governed. More providers mean more technologies, integrations, policies, costs, and dependencies to coordinate. - One of the challenges is **workload placement**. Ad hoc decisions can lead to cloud sprawl, duplication, increased TCO, and technical debt. - The answer lies in a formal workload placement policy. Assessment, dependency mapping, technical and regulatory constraints, technological affinities, and TCO evaluation. ## How cloud sprawl develops “*Ad hoc workload placement leads to cloud sprawl and inefficiency*.” With this statement, Gartner analysts initiate a reflection on the **risks of an approach to workload placement based on isolated decisions and a lack of shared criteria.** Cloud architecture hyper-fragmentation (*cloud sprawl*) rarely stems from a single decision; **more often, it is the result of many technically sound choices made at different points in time.** One team adopts a managed service on Azure, another chooses AWS for a new workload, a legacy application remains on-premises, while an analytics component is moved to Google Cloud. Meanwhile, acquisitions and integrations **add further environments and dependencies**. From an architectural perspective, *sprawl* can take different forms. It can involve: 1. **Entire workloads** distributedacross different providers; 2. **Individual components** of the same workload: front ends, backends, databases, identity systems, data platforms, and third-party services; 3. **Fragmented operational stacks,** with different tools for monitoring, security, IAM, backup, networking, and CI/CD.. ## The Consequences: costs, complexity, security, and technical debt When workloads and components are distributed across different cloud environments, the company is exposed to several risks. ### Increased management complexity The first obvious consequence is **increased management complexity.** Cross-cloud integrations, network configurations, IAM systems, data flows, and the tools required to monitor infrastructures that do not necessarily share the same technologies all increase. Even routine activities such as troubleshooting, patching, backup, or incident response **may require different skills and procedures**. ### Increased TCO This complexity is accompanied by **a direct impact on Total Cost of Ownership**. The cost of a workload does not only include compute or storage resources: **data transfer and *egress*, connectivity between clouds, licenses, duplicated tools, support, specialized skills,** and increased operational effort must also be taken into account. A choice that is cost-effective when assessed in isolation may therefore prove **less advantageous when considered in the context of the entire IT ecosystem.** ### Security and compliance Fragmentation **increases the surface that needs to be governed** from a security and compliance perspective. Different providers adopt different models, services, policies, and tools, making it difficult to apply principles such as **least privilege, segmentation, encryption, and access traceability consistently.** Furthermore, distributing data and workloads across different regions and providers can complicate **data residency, audits, evidence collection, and the consistent application of digital sovereignty principles**. The risk is not necessarily that multicloud is less secure, but that uncontrolled growth can result in **inconsistent configurations and visibility gaps**. ### Technical Debt A specific chapter concerns **technical debt.** Each placement decision **introduces dependencies that must be maintained over time**. If tightly coupled components are distributed across different providers, they **become a structural part of the architecture**. As a result, every future change, migration, or rationalization requires more work and entails greater risks. ## How to best govern workload placement in multicloud Quoting Gartner, the key to effectively governing multicloud is to define a *formal workload placement policy* before distribution across multiple clouds **becomes a problem for CIOs.** Not all companies reach this level of maturity from the outset because, as mentioned, multicloud often grows through layers, and rules **are only introduced once complexity, costs, and dependencies have already increased.** The policy serves precisely to transform workload placement from an occasional choice into a repeatable decision-making process. The first step, however, comes even before the policy and consists of **a structured assessment of the existing environment.** Before deciding where to place new workloads or how to rationalize those already distributed, it is necessary to have a **reliable overview of applications, dependencies, data flows, integrations, security and compliance requirements**, costs, and available skills. In cases like these, it is more important than ever for the initial assessment to be reliable and thorough. On this basis, the workload placement policy can be built around several recurring decision-making criteria. ### Start with dependencies, not the provider Placement should start with mapping workload dependencies and integrations, **not with the characteristics of the individual provider**. If components that communicate frequently with one another are placed on different clouds, **each interaction has to cross different infrastructure boundaries, resulting in greater latency, data traffic**, network configurations, security controls, and potential points of failure. For this reason, providers recommend, whenever possible, **keeping tightly related workloads and components close to one another.** ### Define your non-negotiables first **Some decisions can be ruled out from the outset.** Compliance, data residency, regional service availability, security requirements, SLAs, and technical characteristics may make a provider unsuitable **regardless of the price or features it offers.** The policy should clearly distinguish mandatory requirements from those for which a trade-off is possible. ### Assess the real TCO, not the theoretical one As mentioned above, TCO is one of the key criteria in workload placement, **but accurately estimating it in a multicloud environment is less straightforward than it may seem.** Providers apply different models for compute, storage, networking, data transfer, managed services, discounts, and commitments; consequently, comparing two workloads solely based on list prices may produce results of limited significance. Hyperscalers provide **pricing calculators to model configurations and consumption,** while some tools make it possible to include historical usage, contractual discounts, *reserved capacity*, or migration scenarios. The challenge increases when the workload becomes part of an existing multicloud architecture because, in that case, TCO should not be calculated only on the destination service, but also **on the impact that this choice has on the rest of the environment.** New connections, cross-cloud traffic, existing commitments, and unused capacity elsewhere can change the economic outcome. ## Kirey: helping companies unlock the full potential of multicloud At Kirey, **we help companies** **build and govern their** [**cloud journey**](https://www.kireygroup.com/en/competencies/cloud-infrastrutture), leveraging the benefits of hybrid and multicloud models for many years. Thanks to a decade of experience, we know that more distributed architectures also entail a higher level of complexity, which must be addressed with methodology, vision, and consistent governance. In our projects, we support organizations operating **in complex and highly regulated industries** and help them define multicloud strategies that specifically include workload placement. In doing so, we consider not only performance and technical requirements, but also resilience, security, compliance, and economic sustainability. The goal is to build architectures capable of leveraging the flexibility of multicloud in a functional and effective way. [Contact us](https://www.kireygroup.com/en/contact) to explore together a sustainable, secure evolution path aligned with your business needs. - [Previous post](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/shadow-ai-4-out-of-5-employees-use-tools-not-governed-by-the-company?hsLang=en) - [Read all posts](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news?hsLang=en) - Next post ## Related posts: #### [Cloud Economics: the goal is not to spend less, bu...](https://newsroom.kireygroup.com/en/news/cloud-economics-the-goal-is-not-to-spend-less-but-to-spend-better?hsLang=en) In recent years, several companies have attracted attention after migrating applications and workloa... 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