Over the past 10 years, enterprises widely rejected being locked into a single vendor's offerings, as open source and web-based architectures created more options for purchasing best of breed. While that freed them from the shackles of continuously rising vendor support fees, it created other challenges, including complexity, integration difficulties and continuous maintenance. Now, some are questioning whether lock-in maybe wasn't so bad, reports Drew Robb at CIOUpdate.

"The more complex your technology gets, the greater the tendency to standardize and migrate to fewer vendors," Marc Barnett, senior manager for solutions and services marketing at CDW, said. "When you mitigate all the variables, vendor lock-in simply makes interoperability and maintenance much more simplistic."

Pella, a manufacturer of windows, was having trouble keeping various systems from multiple vendors synchronized, so it moved to a single vendor, said Rick Hassman, Pella's director of corporate applications. Going with one vendor offers benefits not only in terms of time and expense, but also in terms of building a partnership, he said.

Although a company may find a single source to be advantageous in any single instance, lock-in still can lead to higher costs and lower innovation. "Working with a single vendor can dampen competition, innovation and the openness that results from a more competitive environment," said CDW's Barnett.

For more:
- see Drew Robb's article at CIOUpdate

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