How to prevent vendor lock-in

What is vendor lock-in?

We talk about vendor lock-in when a customer becomes reliant on a particular vendor's products or services and has a hard time switching to another vendor without incurring substantial costs, effort or disruptions. This dependency can come from several things, like exclusive service agreements or the use of proprietary technologies that are incompatible with other systems.

A real-life example: cloud vendor lock-in

Imagine a company outsources most of its software infrastructure to a cloud provider like Amazon Web Services (AWS). Over time, the company builds its applications around their specific services and APIs, heavily relying on AWS to build and run its applications. When wanting to switch to another cloud provider, the company will face several difficulties as moving databases after they have been set up can be rather challenging.

Whether it is with cloud services or not, it goes without saying that as a business, you don’t want to fall into the vendor lock-in trap. So, let’s go over a few tips on how to prevent vendor lock-in.

How to avoid vendor lock-in

Prioritize open standards

Choosing vendors and solutions that follow open standards and encourage interoperability is always a good idea. This way, you can easily move your data around and integrate it with other systems without being tied down to one vendor's exclusive technologies.

Negotiate favorable contracts

Let’s say you are working with developers to build a new web application. Before signing the contract with them, it’s important to ensure that you are protected from vendor lock-in. You can easily do that by making sure your contract includes:

• Explicit data ownership and portability clauses: who owns the code?
• Provisions for assistance during transitions between vendors
• No auto-renewal clauses that extend contracts inadvertently

Implement data portability and portable application architectures

Ensure that data can be easily exported in standard formats (e.g., CSV, JSON, XML) to facilitate migration to other systems. You should also avoid proprietary data formats that lock you into a specific vendor's ecosystem.

Similarly, it's important to create applications and systems that are portable and decoupled from the underlying infrastructure or platform. This way, if you ever need to switch to different vendors, the process will be much easier and hassle-free.

Choose a third party that follows industry standards

When outsourcing your custom software project to a third party, you must make sure they follow industry standards. This means that if you ever decide to change vendors, you know that other companies will be able to work on your project too.

Of course, as a client, it’s not your job to check every line of code written by the company you hire. This being said, by following all the tips above, you can now compare vendors and make an informed choice.

How does Miyagami help clients avoid vendor lock-in?

As a custom software company that has helped many other businesses build their dream digital products, we understand our clients’ needs and constraints and always strive to minimize vendor lock-in risks.

Our team knows about the importance of using open standards and open-source components and always follows the latest industry-standard practices. Our clients retain ownership and once the product is built, we give them full access to the code and data. Finally, we empower our clients with the knowledge and tools to manage the system without relying on us indefinitely.

This is how, at Miyagami, we help clients build robust, flexible, and future-proof solutions that avoid the pitfalls of vendor lock-in.

Contact us today and let’s chat about your next custom software, web or mobile application!