How IT Vendors Restrict Their Clients’ Freedom of Choice
May 17, 2022
5 min read
May 17, 2022
5 min read
On the surface, all-in-one IT solutions offer a lot of benefits to businesses. From bundled services at a discount, to easy integrations with a single centralized platform, to a single point of contact to troubleshoot issues, a single-vendor approach can – in theory – be a valuable partnership for any organization.
Unfortunately, this utopian vision for IT service management rarely plays out that way. Although the pitch for single-vendor solutions often highlights these potential business benefits, the reality is much more grim: as single-party IT vendors consolidate power within each client, they become indispensable to business operations. As a result, those relationships can end up feeling more like a hostage situation than a balanced partnership.
That’s because there’s no accountability to ensure IT vendors uphold their end of the bargain. Once a client becomes deeply dependent on IT services offered by a single vendor, that business faces significant risks and costs if it wants to migrate to a different provider. Even as costs rise and vendor solutions become misaligned with business outcomes, companies face fewer and fewer options to upgrade their IT infrastructure without the help of their primary vendor.
The freedom to choose your vendor relationships, solutions and services is critical to ensuring that you receive valuable services at a fair market price. However, vendor business practices are limiting your business’s freedom of choice by making IT service alternatives seem impossible to obtain. And while IT vendors are often successful at making such a transition seem resource-intensive and disruptive to your business, it’s not as difficult as they’d like you to believe.
Dissatisfied clients still have options to escape these vendor traps and restore their ability to control their own IT infrastructure.
While some businesses may recognize that they are trapped by their IT service agreements, others may be unaware of how these IT vendor partnerships have gradually become more difficult to escape.
Here are some of the classic signs that your IT vendor has created an environment that prevents your business from exercising its freedom of choice:
Even when businesses are dissatisfied with their IT vendor services, this frustration doesn’t necessarily prompt a change. In most cases, the potential cost and disruption of such a project deters them from dramatically overhauling their IT environment.
The problem with this inaction is that, as time goes on, the limitations created by your single-vendor IT model will only get worse. And the longer you wait, the tougher it becomes to pull yourself out of this downward spiral, due to the following constraints:
Given the risks and limitations of relying on a single vendor, it makes sense for businesses to embrace a new IT service model that leans on multiple vendors capable of delivering modern, flexible, scalable solutions that deliver the value your business is seeking.
While such an intensive transformation project comes with significant challenges, including cost and resource constraints, successfully migrating away from single-vendor partnerships is possible with the right strategic partner. With its team of experienced IT professionals who focus specific on legacy systems, Origina has the expertise your business needs to extract you from your vendor relationship, and support your transition to a business-led IT approach.
We’ll help you regain your freedom to choose the IT solutions and providers that deliver the greatest benefits to your business. Contact us today to learn more. And if you’re still exploring whether your current IT strategy is holding you back, read our latest white paper: Taking Charge of Your IT Roadmap.
Origina is a third-party software support and maintenance (TPSM) solution unlike any other. It’s the only TPSM solution that gives IBM® customers 24/7 access to over 600 IBM® product experts with a minimum of 15 years supporting and developing IBM® products.
Origina shifts you from relying on a single point of vendor support to having a team of legacy software experts that implement an extensive system of checks and balances to greatly limit your exposure to vulnerabilities.
We support all versions – supported or not – of over 800 IBM® products and save our customers hundreds of thousands on OEM upgrades they don’t need. Our team works hard to enhance, extend and protect your IBM® products and provide solid advice on how to best migrate business-critical systems.
We’re a team of straight shooters who love to talk software shop and fully support software customers’ freedom of choice. Get in touch if you’d like a free feasibility assessment to help you assess whether third-party support is the best option for your company.
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