Is Vendor Lock-in truly a risk of Cloud Computing?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) November 27, 2011 -- Vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in or customer lock-in makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products and services, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs. In the midst all the commotion about whether or not to use the cloud, there's growing concern about Vendor lock-in. This is one of the primary fears expressed by companies considering migrating to Cloud Computing.

Much of the fear of lock-in is caused by misconceptions, when people talk about lock-in, they often don't distinguish among the several cloud types that exist, each of which requires varying levels of commitment. The degree of lock-in needs to be weighed against the advantages of using the Cloud; Particularly with software and platform as a service, vendors use unique and proprietary user interfaces, application programming interfaces (API) and databases.

To take full advantage of the system, users, or third parties, need to program specifications to varying degrees. If they grow dissatisfied with the service or the vendor goes under, data and or applications will need to be reformatted to be moved, which could be complex and costly.

Policies should be set early on regarding how the company will use the cloud and under what circumstances. Vendor's viability is important; companies must do in-depth research and ask the vendor to provide, under a nondisclosure agreement, detailed company information. This will ensure the correct vendor is chosen.

It’s important for clients to implement specific exit strategies in the contracts with vendors to reduce the resulting costs of vendor lock-in. It is imperative that an agreement with the vendor on the procedures for abandoning their application is established. For instance, how does data come out, and what is the vendor's involvement in making that happen? How much time it takes to get the data out after service nonrenewal?

The concept of vendor lock-in could be difficult to deal with considering that cloud computing providers offer very different technology solutions, programming languages, and data formats in the beginning. Over time, standards will develop, most likely driven by customer demand. This will create tension, because customer demand will be offset by the advantages that vendors see in lock-in. For that reason, users need to be adamant about which standards they desire and where they're most important.

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