To avoid vendor lock-in and enable easier migration between cloud providers, which approach should be used to package applications?

• A. Bare-metal
• B. Dedicated appliances
• C. Containerization
• D. Virtual machines

Answer: (C)

Packaging applications as containers isolates the application and its dependencies from the underlying infrastructure, making it run the same way on any host with a compatible container runtime. This portability means you can move the containerized app from one cloud provider to another with minimal changes, reducing reliance on provider-specific services or configurations. The lightweight, standard container format (such as OCI/Docker images) also supports consistent deployment across environments and simplifies versioning and rollouts with orchestration tools like Kubernetes.

Bare-metal and dedicated appliances tie you to specific hardware or configurations, which makes migration to another provider costly and complex. Virtual machines are more portable than bare metal, but they’re heavier, slower to start, and can still be encumbered by provider-specific VM formats or tooling. Containers strike the best balance of portability, speed, and consistency across clouds.