Portability is often overlooked, but it’s a key capability when building truly global cloud-native solutions. It is crucial in the design of cloud-native systems, but organizations often focus on features or performance rather than future-proofing their solutions for cross-cloud deployments. Portability enables flexibility and avoids vendor lock-in, especially in global solutions that may need to meet regional regulatory and operational requirements.

I describe portability as the ability to move an application or service seamlessly across environments (public, private, or hybrid clouds) without significant rework.

There are many orchestration tools available, but Kubernetes is one of the most mature tools for orchestrating containers and is what I work with for this purpose.

Kubernetes abstracts a big portion of the cloud provider’s complexity

Kubernetes abstracts a big portion of the cloud provider’s complexity, allowing the same solution to be used across any cloud that supports it. Big secret… all of the key players do: Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s Azure, and Google’s GCP.

While not all cloud services expose Kubernetes directly, many managed services, such as Google Cloud Functions and App Engine, may use similar container orchestration technologies behind the scenes. The logs and behavior of these services often resemble Kubernetes-based solutions like GKE, but with a more restrictive or limited scope. It wouldn’t be surprising if Kubernetes or similar technologies are used under the hood for some of their offerings, given how cloud-native infrastructures lke Redis or MySQL are designed to be scalable and containerized.

Leveraging this ability to create environments truly in any cloud, I had the experience to stand up a full complex environment in a non-mainstream cloud in China with surprisingly low customizations. Though deploying in China presents regulatory challenges, cloud providers like Alibaba and Tencent support Kubernetes, minimizing the need for major changes.

This also provides the capability to recover expediently in case of a disaster, as it allows for quickly spinning up another environment. Kubernetes enables rapid disaster recovery by allowing environments to be redeployed in another cloud, as long as backups and configurations are in place.

Cloud prices are rising, and if you or your client has lost control or the know-how to manage solutions efficiently, there’s a big potential for losses in the future. Once the big players have captured market share, price increases will likely be more prominent, and by that time, switching to another cloud could be prohibitedly costly.

Not having this portability means losing the ability to adopt new tooling, open-source solutions, or even integrate with third-party services and on-premises software. Vendor lock-in can limit innovation and make transitioning to other platforms complex and expensive, as seen with companies heavily relying on proprietary cloud services like AWS Lambda.

Portability is not just a nice-to-have feature in today’s software engineering and cloud environments—it’s a necessity. As cloud adoption continues to grow, the ability to move seamlessly between providers, maintain flexibility, and avoid vendor lock-in is becoming more critical. By adopting portable architectures, using tools like Kubernetes, and staying prepared for future shifts—whether in pricing or technology—you can build more resilient and adaptable systems. In an increasingly cloud-centric world, the organizations that prioritize portability will be the ones best positioned to succeed and innovate, no matter where they deploy.

See more: https://portworx.com/blog/enterprises-to-double-cloud-native-usage-by-2029/