Every major cloud hyperscaler is having global impact outages. The 2024 Microsoft incident happened due to a bug in Crowdstrike. Google Cloud failed this summer because of a small configuration issue. AWS's most popular region US-East-1 was impacted in October 2025 due to a small change in one of their services. In each case, thousands of organizations worldwide saw their applications crash.
Whatever the cloud provider, one thing is certain: Each of them has some single point of failure in their stack which is extremely difficult to identify. When it strikes, it can take down scores of users without warning.
Why Isn’t Multi-Cloud Already the Norm?
We appreciate the rapid resolution and swift action that each cloud provider took in their respective cases. Despite following every possible precaution and best practice, the risk of system failure is inherent in the architecture of most cloud providers. As is often repeated in IT, “There are only two types of disks in the world: Those which have failed and those which are about to fail.” It’s still true for every single piece of the stack today.
Configurations can go wrong, bugs can creep in, batteries can fail, natural disasters can take down datacenters, and so on. A single service outage might have widespread consequences.
So, what becomes more important for data architects is how quickly your backup plans can act. And they cannot act if they’re on the same failed datacenter, same availability zone (AZ), same region, and/or cloud provider.
What’s Stopping Enterprises from Going Multi-Cloud?
When it comes to spreading the data beyond AZs, many CIOs feel compelled to adhere to the status quo and bear the risk of outage, especially when they evaluate the costs and complexity of their existing systems. The cost of spreading data beyond a single cloud provider may appear way too high. Often a large part of that cost is the hefty data egress fee charged by the cloud providers.
Why Does the EU Data Act Change Everything?
We strongly believe that the growing reliance of worldwide critical systems on these large cloud providers has made it important to act now. The expensive egress cost is not justified and is a hindrance in improving the state of mission critical systems today.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. The new EU Data Act also makes it easier for customers to switch cloud providers by:
Allowing customers to provide two months’ written termination notice to cloud providers to switch so that they are not locked into annual or multi-year deals
Obligating cloud providers to list all categories of data that can be exported to a new provider.
Obligating cloud providers to assist companies in making the switch.
What is the EU Data Act?
We are glad that the EU is leading this change, with the EU Data Act that went into effect on September 12th, 2025.
The EU Data Act focuses on interoperability, mandating that cloud vendors make it easy for customers to exit their environment when needed. While customers may charge for the direct costs of switching (Note: Currently, we do not believe switching charges include standard service fees or early termination penalties, but this may change when EU regulators issue additional guidance) until January 12, 2027, after this, the Act explicitly prohibits such charges (Note: We are waiting for the EU regulators to provide additional guidance on overall fees and charges).
Our customers often choose CockroachDB strategically so they’re not only protected from data-transfer lock-ins, but also benefit from the simplicity of a database that runs the same way everywhere, without requiring any application-level changes.
While Google’s one-time data transfer fee offset was already a huge win, we’re glad to see Google Cloud taking the lead in strengthening it further with their Data Transfer Essentials announcement, which introduces no-cost, multicloud data transfers for EU and U.K. customers. It says:
“Designed for ‘in-parallel’ processing of workloads belonging to the same organization that are distributed across two or more cloud providers, Data Transfer Essentials enables you to build flexible, multicloud strategies and use the best-of-breed solutions across different cloud providers. This can foster greater digital operational resilience – without incurring outbound data transfer costs from Google Cloud.”
The business impact: Enterprises can use CockroachDB running on Google’s Compute Engine (GCE) or GKE (Google’s Kubernetes Engine) and sync it to another cloud provider, without incurring data transfer costs.
What Comes Next for Multi-Cloud?
Google’s current announcement doesn’t cover all services, and also doesn’t go beyond the EU & UK. Although the EU Data Act is only applicable to cloud providers that deploy applicable services in an EU member state, we have a strong faith that the industry is ready for a pivotal moment: one where running workloads across multiple cloud providers will be standard practice and fully supported.
For our customers in the EU and U.K. ready to run their SQL applications across multiple cloud providers, we can help. See how CockroachDB made global payments provider Form3 scalable, adaptable, compliant, resilient, and multi-cloud.
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FAQ: The EU Data Act and Multi-Cloud
If you’re evaluating how the EU Data Act changes your cloud architecture and cost model, these FAQs break down the key points:
What is the EU Data Act? The EU Data Act is the new EU legislation designed to improve data portability and reduce vendor lock-in by requiring cloud providers to support easier customer exits and from January 12, 2027, the prohibition of direct switching fees (Note: Pending additional guidance from EU regulators).
How does it make multi-cloud more affordable? By prohibiting direct switching fees from January 12, 2027 onwards, the EU Data Act lowers one of the biggest barriers to moving data between clouds. This allows enterprises to architect truly distributed, resilient systems without massive cost penalties.
How does CockroachDB fit in? CockroachDB runs the same way across any environment, whether it’s on-prem, hybrid, or multi-cloud. This way, EU users can leverage the new flexibility from the EU Data Act without re-architecting their applications.
Does the EU Data Act apply globally? Not yet. It currently covers companies that offer the applicable services in the EU but it’s likely to influence global cloud policy and best practices over time.
Disclaimer: The content provided in this blog post is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Cockroach Labs makes no representations or warranties regarding the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the information contained herein, and expressly disclaims any liability arising from reliance on such content.
Ankur Raina is a Sr. Staff Sales Engineer at Cockroach Labs. He is based in Singapore and primarily works with customers in the ASEAN region. Ankur has over a decade of experience working with Relational & NoSQL databases and is a strong advocate for multi-cloud strategy.
