Cloud Vendor Lock-In is Shocking, But There's a Get Out Of Jail Card
The Register, Thursday, April 4th, 2024
The Sleepwalking Into Disaster klaxon is echoing through the corridors of power. Again. This time, the corridors are British and the klaxonner is the Cabinet Office's Central Digital & Data Office.
The CDDO keeps an eye on where the money's going in government IT projects - our money, our services. It has spotted that the intended spend on AWS/ is enough to gravely risk vendor lock-in. Nobody wants to be on the wrong end of that, but the danger is far worse if you're a state department having to comply with strict fairness rules on tendering and proposals.
Vendor lock-in isn't a binary, it's more of a sliding scale, from complete freedom to do what you like to complete dependence on a single supplier. The more widely you use a supplier, the harder it is to move away. It's a power dynamic over who controls your IT decisions, which is why an early warning like this report demands immediate attention. What you can do about it, though, isn't clear, especially if you're dealing with a Too Big To Care vendor. Given you're worried about a power struggle, you most probably are.