The Human Cost Behind the Cloud Bill | Valiantys

Let’s start with a scenario you know all too well: your team deploys workloads across two, three, maybe even four cloud providers. You tell the board you’re avoiding lock-in, you’re increasing resilience, you’re using the “right tool for the job.” Great strategy.

Except: three months in, you realize the biggest bill you have isn’t just the compute/storage cost. It’s the time team members spend navigating different portals, IAM models, billing dashboards, or working around unfamiliar tooling. That shows up in slowed delivery, fatigue, a mountain of unused resources, which means hidden cost. 

Multi-cloud: The Reality

It’s not just a fringe scenario. According to a 2023 study by 451 Research, 98% of enterprises using IaaS/PaaS have adopted multi-cloud. Also, two-thirds of those use two or three public cloud providers, and 31% use four or more.

Here’s what this means: multicloud is almost the default. But what’s often not defaulted is how to manage it well.

Developer Experience: The New Cost Lever

Great developer experiences create efficient, consistent, and scalable delivery across any cloud., not as a feel-good initiative, but as a genuine cost-optimization strategy.

That means:

• Unified Toolchains – Developers should have the same experience no matter which cloud they’re deploying to.
• Self-Service Platforms – Empowering teams to spin up environments or pipelines safely, without waiting on manual approvals.
• Integrated Governance – Security and compliance baked into the workflow, not bolted on later.
• Cost and Observability by Design – Visibility into usage, tagging, and performance built into the developer platform itself.

By removing friction, we’re not just improving morale, we’re controlling cost at the source.

Bringing It All Together: DevEx as the Multi-cloud Multiplier

When multicloud environments work with developers instead of against them, the benefits compound:

• Faster delivery with fewer context switches.
• Reduced shadow IT or duplicate tooling.
• Proactive cost management and right-sizing of workloads.
• Happier teams who spend more time solving problems than solving platforms.

That’s why at Valiantys, we approach multicloud strategies through a DevEx-first lens, one that unifies technology, process, and people. 

A Deeper Dive- From Vision to Practice

To explore this further, our Global Practice Head for Developer Experience, Phil Heijkoop, recently sat down with Techstrong TV to discuss how organizations can uncover and manage these hidden costs in multicloud environments.

In the interview, Phil explains why focusing on DevEx isn’t just about developer happiness - it’s about building operational and financial resilience.

 🎥 Watch the full interview here: 

Valiantys’ Philip Heijkoop on Managing Hidden Costs in Multicloud Strategies (Techstrong TV)

Final Thoughts

If you're running multicloud, or are planning to, and don't have a clear path to the operational value you were seeking, or would like stronger governance and enablement, let's talk. The core problem isn't solely picking which cloud providers you should go with from a technical angle, but also designing your cloud adoption strategy to deliver on your strategic and operational goals. Multi-cloud is an amazing strategy when done well, avoid the hidden tax by doing so along one dimension.

At Valiantys, we believe that when you prioritize developer experience, you don’t just deliver features faster, you unlock the multicloud promise without paying hidden tax.