Cloud Vendor Lock In: what is it and how to avoid it?

This is an undisputed truth: cloud  computing has taken the market by storm. Its benefits are, besides offering financial relief to companies, a way to boost their business performance. More security and agility in the digital world. However, some providers may deviate from this path and offer a service that the client, i.e. your company, cannot escape — Cloud Vendor Lock In.

Therefore, it’s important that organizations study and prepare to avoid being trapped in a contract.

At times when flexibility – something that Multicloud offers – is key to being competitive, it’s essential that your company understands everything about the subject, avoiding possible great losses in the case of a service migration.

In this content, we will explore a bit more about Cloud Vendor Lock In, its drawbacks, how to avoid it, and also an incredible tip on how to take advantage of an entire cloud infrastructure without the risk of a Cloud Vendor Lock In.

Learn more ahead!

Cloud Vendor Lock In: what is it?

Today, the SaaS (Software as a Service) market is huge. According to a Gartner study, this segment alone is expected to be worth more than US$151 billion by 2022. As Sid Nag, VP of Research at Gartner, states in the study, “at this point, adopting cloud computing is par for the course.”

That means that if any company is not already on the cloud, it must be in a hurry to migrate to it.

The problem is that, in some cases, the promise of freedom and flexibility for your company to grow in a scalable and organic manner is not fulfilled. And so, some providers started to “lock” their clients into contractual clauses and development requirements that prevented them from migrating to another server.

Imagine the following scenario:

Company A hired SaaS from Provider X. Upon reaching a certain period of its journey, Company A identified the need to migrate its operation (or part of it) to Provider Y, which better fits its demands.

However, due to contractual impediments — which make this operation expensive and technically complex — Company A is helpless and unable to migrate its workload.

That is Cloud Vendor Lock In.

Besides SaaS, it can occur when contracting PaaS (Platform as a Service), in which the client develops its own applications — and that can represent another impediment for migration.

For these providers, Cloud Vendor Lock In can be justified as a way to retain clients in their solution environment. However, the practice does not take into account the clients’ own need to make their operations more flexible and improve deliveries. Sometimes, a provider’s capacity does not meet the client’s needs.

Therefore, once a provider has implemented the Cloud Vendor Lock In, performing necessary migrations becomes very costly for the client.

Besides the financial impact, these restrictions also hinder future migrations and integration of applications — due to the development characteristics of each PaaS.

How to avoid Cloud Vendor Lock In 

So, how can this problem be solved? The good news is that Cloud Vendor Lock In is not an industry standard. It can be avoided, even if it requires some commitment to studying certain issues.

To make it easier, we have listed some key considerations. Ready to escape Cloud Vendor Lock In? Check below:

Escape Cloud Vendor Lock In at all costs

Sounds obvious, right? Nevertheless, it’s the first step of the journey.

Check your provider’s flexibility: can you move your app to other clouds, or migrate the service from another provider, if necessary? If not, does the provider set conditions under which this is possible (such as faults)?

Also, if you need to build apps that require complex customization, make sure you have a backup plan. Even better, if you can afford it, is to have an alternative cloud to run your code as a backup.

Get to know the different PaaS

One alternative is to split the risk. That is, use resources from multiple PaaS providers.

If they are not dependent on a single cloud to deliver their applications and businesses, you can set out to explore the options of the PaaS you control.

This requires some genuine interest, so ask your providers questions and try to understand how the PaaS runs and how your risk management is set up (especially in the case of a large centralizing cloud).

Ask questions about redundancy and the system architecture

Try to fully understand your software architecture and system redundancy with the help of your cloud provider. This comprehension will give you more autonomy when negotiating with the provider.

A good look at the architecture diagrams of the cloud environment can provide in-depth information about system reliability — and whether or not it’s possible to escape Cloud Vendor Lock In.

Ascenty ACCX: a powerful ally against Cloud Vendor Lock In

Ascenty’s ACCX, part of Cloud Connect, is a turnkey solution for companies searching for this exact flexibility between service providers and cloud platforms.

Ascenty Cloud Connectivity Exchange is a solution that integrates different distributed data environments in several public clouds (AWS, Oracle Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and IBM Cloud) to a single platform, integrated with your data network (IP/MPLS).

It’s an ecosystem that integrates the environment of multiple layer-3 public clouds into your infrastructure.

This way, you have full integration potential of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS solutions. With ACCX, clients reallocate their workload to the public cloud that best meets their demand according to their strategy, besides creating an easier network integration with their private structure.

The platform enables interconnection between Cloud Providers, guaranteeing simplified migration or simply ensuring that through low latency interconnection there can be interdependencies between applications and clouds, so you have gains in time, in availability and can take advantage of full interoperability of different public clouds at a fair price.

Cloud Vendor Lock In can be an issue for your company. Therefore, it’s ideal to choose a partnership that eliminates these risks, enabling the free use of the cloud resources that your business requires.

So, talk to Ascenty and understand how ACCX can serve your organization today!