How cloud computing helps remove vendor lock in

I often read or get asked to explain the risk of moving to cloud.   I think the real question leading edge companies should be asking is what is the risk of not moving to the cloud.  Can your business afford to have vendor lock in and a set of infrastructure which is under utilized on average the majority of the time?

While most of the focus on cloud computing is cost reduction, another important aspect is empowerment for the customer to move from one vendor to another with ease.

The traditional model has a customer purchasing hardware, data center space and capitalizing the hardware over 3 to 5 years.   Once the hardware is bought there is a significant amount of vendor lock in.  If there are technology advances with new hardware you do not usually have the option to replace what you have with new hardware.  Also, if your IT infrastructure is outsourced as part of a traditional strategic outsourcing contract there is usually a 5 to 10 year deal with termination charges.

Contrast that to a cloud model where the service provider owns the hardware and provides cost on a set of usage based metrics.   The risk of how to leverage new hardware advances shifts from the business to the cloud provider.

The idea of pay for what you use and only when you use it allows the usage to drop off significantly or with some providers completely as a result of no long term contracts.   

In addition to paying for what you use with a cloud provider, cloud makes it easier than ever to define a set of requirements to another cloud provider.  The new cloud provider can spin up an entire cloud infrastructure in days.  The new infrastructure can exist in parallel to your existing infrastructure to allow testing of the new environment prior to cut over.   Once you have completed all your testing you can simply redirect traffic to the new environment.