What is the difference between hybrid cloud and multi-cloud?

Answer

Hybrid cloud combines private infrastructure, such as on-premises data centers or a private cloud, with one or more public clouds, integrating them so workloads and data can move between them. Multi-cloud means using two or more public cloud providers, with or without any private infrastructure. Hybrid cloud is often driven by data sovereignty, latency, or legacy systems that cannot move, while multi-cloud is driven by avoiding lock-in and choosing best-of-breed services. The terms overlap, and an architecture can be both hybrid and multi-cloud at once.