Plotting your escape from “lock-in”

In a previous blog post, we suggested creating a strong ‘build and respond’ capability as an essential foundation to becoming more agile and competitive in the new digital economy.

Historically, IT vendors have developed proprietary solutions that are licensed or delivered to clients, with varying degrees of customisation (depending on the business need).

Aside from any customisations, further enhancements to the solution could only be developed by the vendor – leaving the organisation at the mercy of the vendor’s product roadmaps, licensing conditions, and pricing strategies.

It’s a trap that we now commonly refer to as ‘vendor lock-in’. In reality, lock-in can come in many forms: operating system lock-in, architecture lock-in, multi-year contract lock-in, and skills lock-in.

Having sunk large investments into a vendor’s technology stack, and integrated it into one’s IT operations, it often becomes difficult to change your business in response to new market threats and opportunities.

The answer

By developing an in-house digital capability, and leveraging Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings that are based on open standard architectures, the organisation can insulate itself from a vendor’s technology roadmap – and free itself from lock-in.

Read more at outsystems.co.za