Skip to main content
  1. Blog
  2. Article

James Nunns
on 11 September 2018

What is multi-cloud?


Tech companies, Canonical included, have a problem. That problem is living in buzzwords and jargon, and then assuming everyone knows what we are talking about.

At Canonical we call them ‘Canonicalisms’, other companies have their own names for it.

Whilst we can joke about it, this over-reliance on jargon is a genuine barrier to our audience, developers, customers, people in need of technical help, people in need of assistance in understanding what all these buzzwords are. The jargon is a barrier to people understand what something like the cloud is, in its many different guises, and how these different architectures and strategies can be used for tangible business benefits.

Fortunately, that’s a problem which is solvable.

Canonical has decided to produce a whitepaper that details everything you need to know to understand every type of cloud from public to private and managed to multi-cloud. But, we haven’t stopped there, because these technologies don’t live in a bubble, they’re connected to technologies such as Kubernetes, containers, serverless computing, servers and virtual machines.

Still, understanding the basics about these different technologies is only a piece of the picture, which is why we’ve also included guidance on the best strategies to use, use cases, when and where to deploy and make it a success.

We know that there is no one-size-fits-all type of cloud. Nor is the cloud necessarily the best option for hosting workloads in all situations, we also know that you don’t want to read another vendor specific take on the view of the world, which is why we’ve remained objective in the whitepaper – in true open source fashion.

So, if you want to know what is public cloud or what is multi-cloud and clear away the jargon that’s stopping you from understanding everything you need to know about the cloud, containers, Kubernetes and more, then download this whitepaper.

Download whitepaper

Related posts


ijlal-loutfi
6 March 2026

Sovereign clouds: enhanced data security with confidential computing 

Confidential computing Article

Increasingly, enterprises are interested in improving their level of control over their data, achieving digital sovereignty, and even building their own sovereign cloud. However, this means moving beyond thinking about just where your data is stored to thinking about the entire data lifecycle.  In this blog, we cover the differences betwe ...


Massimiliano Gori
2 March 2026

Supporting more identity providers on Ubuntu with the new Authd OIDC broker

Cloud and server Article

Today we are announcing the general availability of the new generic OpenID Connect (OIDC) broker for Authd. With enterprises needing to centralise access management controls, the ability to choose your own identity solution is paramount. This new broker snap is our answer to that need, allowing Ubuntu Desktop and Server to integrate with ...


Bertrand Boisseau
2 March 2026

Cloud-native Android™ infotainment: your CI pipeline shouldn’t depend on hardware

Automotive Article

More and more often, infotainment systems are being developed and delivered like software, yet often they are still tested and validated using hardware-centric processes. This is far from ideal: access to devices is limited, environments are difficult to reproduce, and iteration slows down as soon as multiple teams need to work in paralle ...