Vendor lock-in occurs when a company is constrained to a single vendor because the associated cost of switching to another company is too high and impractical. Vendor lock-in may force you to continue using a particular product or service regardless of its quality. This is because switching away from that product or service would be too costly, too time-consuming, or too complex.

Vendor lock-in most frequently occurs in cloud computing, where users sign up for cloud-based software platforms but are consequently unable to move their data to different service provider platforms. According to Flexera, 68% of the CIOs (Chief Information Officers) surveyed worried about vendor lock-in with regards to the public cloud. But even though the threat of vendor lock-ins looms over the cloud computing industry, there are easy steps you can take to altogether avoid them. Read more