Post Syndicated from Luca Mezzalira original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/lets-architect-understanding-the-build-versus-buy-dilemma/

Vendor lock in happens when you commit to a specific technology and then don’t have the freedom to maintain full control of your applications. Even if you want to switch to another vendor, it’s not easy because of the financial investment, effort, and time needed to do so.

In the cloud computing, technology changes quickly, and vendor lock in can impact your business objectives. In this edition of Let’s Architect!, we show you how to avoid the risks of vendor lock in and examine when you should build or buy new software.

Buy vs. Build Revisited: 3 Traps to Avoid

In this blog post, Gregor Hohpe shares some tips on how to avoid risks of vendor lock in. He advises to “build the software that differentiates your business and buy all else” and shows you how opportunity cost, an economic concept, plays major role in whether to build or buy software.

Time to Rethink Build vs Buy

Which is the right option for your business: build or buy? Customers often ask this question. The answer is: it depends.

Moving to the cloud does not necessarily mean you are locked in to a cloud provider. Most cloud platforms offer you a pay as-you-go model with the flexibility to choose from a wide range of services and solutions such as serverless, DevOps, etc. However, having advanced and scalable technology products powering your business can help differentiate your core product. And, it can help you innovate faster and increase speed and agility. This blog post will help you choose the right path for you based on your business objectives.

Switching Costs and Lock-In

In this blog post, Mark Schwartz shares his personal story. He talks about his role as the CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services and how he decided to migrate their workloads to the cloud during his time there. He discusses some of his considerations in moving and some of the obstacles he encountered along the way.

See you next time!

Thanks for reading! See you in a couple of weeks when we discuss DevOps.

Other posts in this series

• Let’s Architect! Using open-source technologies on AWS
• Let’s Architect! Architecting for Sustainability
• Let’s Architect! Architecting for Machine Learning
• Let’s Architect! Architecting for Security
• Let’s Architect! Tools for Cloud Architects
• Let’s Architect! Architecting for Blockchain
• Let’s Architect! Architecting microservices with containers
• Let’s Architect! Serverless architecture on AWS
• Let’s Architect! Creating resilient architecture
• Let’s Architect! Architecting for governance and management
• Let’s Architect! Architecting for front end