Multi-cloud isn't a strategy — it's a compliance requirement now
Multi-cloud used to be a negotiating tactic against vendor lock-in. In 2026, for regulated industries operating across borders, it's closer to a legal requirement — data residency rules in the EU, Middle East, and parts of Asia increasingly mandate that certain workloads stay within specific jurisdictions.
That shifts the architecture conversation. Instead of asking "which cloud is cheapest," enterprise teams are asking "which regions must this workload never leave, and which provider has infrastructure there."
The teams handling this well treat multi-cloud as a data classification problem first, and an infrastructure problem second. Classify the data, map it to jurisdictional requirements, then let that map drive provider and region selection — not the reverse.
