Vendor Lock-in: Have They Caught You?

Art Wittmann, in his blog on InformationWeek, writes about the recent move towards vendor lock-in as a result of adopting complete packages from big companies.

What is interesting about his analysis is that he frames in the context of the much-hyped cloud computing, noting:

“If this trend toward use of proprietary systems is true, then what does that say about the other hyped trend of the past few years, cloud computing? Private clouds would seem to be anathema to this trend, unless you allow for single-vendor private clouds, which misses the point of cloud computing.

Stressed out IT shops are more willing to at least consider "solutions" concocted by vendors. While these systems may require fewer servers and may be more responsive to business needs, they'll amount to something closer to island computing than cloud computing, with implementations taking place application by application--and that sounds suspiciously like where we're at today.”

Is your company leaning towards integrating solutions from one vendor, or still shopping around?

Minicom’s answer to avoiding vendor lock-in is a Real Needs approach, which is designed to help companies migrate from analog KVM switches to digital KVM switches without having to replace their existing system.