The Cloud’s Walled Garden Is Withering: Why Customers Are Choosing Open Ecosystems

When hyperscalers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud first hit their stride, they rewrote the rules of enterprise IT. For the first time, businesses could scale infrastructure instantly, pay only for what they used, and leave hardware headaches behind. 

But over time, those gains have come with a tradeoff. The same closed ecosystems (“walled gardens”) that made growth possible also constrain how businesses store, manage, and protect data across clouds. Moving data between them isn’t easy, and it’s rarely affordable. 

What once powered innovation now threatens it. Gartner predicts that by 2029, “more than 50% of organizations will not get the expected results from their multicloud implementations.” 

That’s the shift we’re seeing now. Flexibility is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s a mandate. To strengthen resilience and stay future-ready, partners and customers are embracing open ecosystems designed for portability, interoperability, and control. 

The limits of vendor lock-in 

That vision of openness still bumps up against old realities. Many organizations find that the very platforms that made the cloud so powerful impact how freely data can move. We see this play out in a few familiar ways: 

• Limited compatibility. Every hyperscaler has its own playbook of unique APIs, tools, and data structures that don’t always translate elsewhere, complicating everything from backup to AI workloads. 

• High data-movement costs. Egress fees and tiered retrieval models add up fast. “Cold” storage might look efficient on paper, but the moment you need speed, the meter starts running. 

• Barriers for partners. When pricing is unpredictable and integrations are closed, MSPs, systems integrators, and OEMs struggle to deliver the seamless, value-added solutions customers expect. 

The result? Innovation slows, margins tighten, and customers lose confidence in the cloud’s original promise of choice. That’s why the market is shifting toward open ecosystems that let data, workloads, and ideas move freely.  

Industry analysts see it too. As cloud strategist David Linthicum wrote in InfoWorld, “The next phase of adoption will be defined not just by the Big Three, but by an ever-expanding array of specialized and alternative cloud solutions.” That evolution is already happening, and it’s creating new opportunities for partners who can build, integrate, and innovate across a truly open ecosystem. 

Cloud marketplaces: the power of choice 

CIOs, IT leaders, and service providers are drawing a hard line: they want ecosystems where mobility and integration are the norm. One clear sign of that shift is the rise of cloud marketplaces, platforms where organizations can easily find and deploy solutions that already work together. 

Until recently, most transactions ran through hyperscalers’ own marketplaces. That’s changing fast. Omdia predicts that by 2027, more than half of all cloud marketplace sales will flow through third parties. As chief analyst Alastair Edwards notes, “Success will depend on greater API-led integration between hyperscalers, distributors, and partner platforms.” 

That’s exactly where Wasabi is leading, expanding across marketplaces like IBM Cloud and Pax8 to give customers and partners real choice in how they architect, buy, and scale. These integrations signal a broader shift toward openness across the entire cloud ecosystem. The benefits speak for themselves: 

• Freedom to choose. Build the architecture that fits your needs without being boxed in by a single provider. 

• Faster innovation. Adopt emerging technologies as they’re ready instead of waiting for hyperscalers to add them to their roadmap. 

• Agility for AI and modern workloads. Open ecosystems let organizations train in one cloud and run in another, optimizing cost, speed, and compliance. 

The bottom line: Open ecosystems aren’t just good business; they’re how you take control of your data, your costs, and your future. 

Wasabi as part of an open storage ecosystem 

All the choice in the world doesn’t matter if your data can’t move with you. That’s the true test of an open ecosystem, and it’s exactly what Wasabi was built to deliver. From day one, we’ve given customers and partners the ability to store, access, and protect data anywhere, without the egress fees or restrictions of traditional cloud models. Our simple hot storage service class keeps data instantly available and allows for interoperability with the tools you already use. 

Fully compatible with AWS S3 and other leading platforms, Wasabi fits into existing ecosystems so partners can extend environments, run multicloud workflows, and integrate best-of-breed solutions for backup, security, and analytics, all with transparent pricing and control. 

For MSPs, OEMs, and system integrators, this openness creates opportunity: bundle Wasabi into multicloud backup, disaster recovery, or AI-driven offerings, and deliver scalable value without vendor lock-in. 

This model supports a full range of mission-critical workloads, including: 

• Backup and recovery 

• Cyber-resilient storage 

• File and media management 

• Video surveillance  

•  Content delivery 

• AI and analytics pipelines 

The result: a foundation for true multicloud freedom with data that moves where it needs to, delivers when it must, and stays protected at every step. 

Proof in practice: openness that works 

Across industries, Wasabi’s partners and customers are putting openness to work in the real world. Their results show what happens when cloud strategy stops being theoretical and starts being practical, and when interoperability turns into measurable outcomes. 

Scalability without lock-in: 
“We’re using a whole host of the AWS services, but we’ve tightly integrated Wasabi in VIDA as hot storage. […] Wasabi’s commercial model and scalability makes it an absolutely essential component of our overall architecture.” (Symon Roue, Managing Director, VIDA Content OS [BBC Studios]) 

Hybrid resilience: 
“Wasabi is now the backbone of our off-site backup strategy, integrated seamlessly with our on-prem and hybrid infrastructure.” (Truong Cong Luan, Head of Cloud, TPCOMS) 

Agility in innovation: 
“We were able to quickly tie Wasabi into the rest of our storage architecture and interface with it using standard utilities and services.” (Prerak Sanghvi, CTO, Proof) 

Data sovereignty and control: 
“Our customers gain security from a contractual point of view and avoid technical lock-in, but they also gain full sovereignty and control over their data.” (Anthony Bucknor, Head of Data Center and Cloud, Autodata) 

Performance that fuels possibility: 
“Everything revolves around data in the cloud, and if we can get access to it, we are going to be a better business. […] The data we hold in the Wasabi infrastructure can be utilized in ways that we haven’t even thought of yet.” (Josh Carley, Vice President of Technology, TD Garden) 

Across every sector, the pattern is clear: when ecosystems are open, progress accelerates. Openness isn’t just a philosophy, it’s a performance advantage, and it’s changing how organizations think about cloud strategy. 

An open future 

The first wave of cloud was about access. The second was about scale. The next is about openness, and it will be powered by partnerships. Closed ecosystems may have fueled the early cloud era, but today they slow innovation and limit opportunity. Our partners see that every day: customers want to move data easily, build hybrid solutions, and choose the tools that fit their goals. 

Open ecosystems make that possible. They let partners design services around customer outcomes instead of provider boundaries, and they give customers confidence that their strategy will evolve with technology, not against it. That’s the future we’re building together: open, resilient, and ready for what’s next.