{"id":13910,"date":"2022-11-23T11:35:34","date_gmt":"2022-11-23T19:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.couchbase.com\/blog\/?p=13910"},"modified":"2025-06-13T20:19:17","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T03:19:17","slug":"why-cloud-lock-in-is-getting-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.couchbase.com\/blog\/why-cloud-lock-in-is-getting-worse\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Cloud Lock In is Getting Worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost everything we do, both online and offline, is powered by the cloud. Whether it\u2019s buying groceries at your local supermarket, streaming your favorite TV show or opening an email \u2013 you are using the cloud. The computation power, storage capabilities and unparalleled convenience of cloud ecosystems is spurring incredible adoption. Today, 50% of the world\u2019s corporate data is stored in the cloud with $178 billion dollars in revenue being <\/span>generated<\/span><\/a> this year alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

As cloud computing becomes increasingly ubiquitous, it is equally becoming increasingly competitive, with the main three providers \u2014 Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Microsoft Azure \u2013 fighting for a bigger slice of the pie. <\/span>AWS<\/span><\/a> holds the lion\u2019s share of the market at 34%, but its closest rivals are growing quickly. This has required strategic offering enhancements to capture more of the market.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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In its infancy, the field existed mainly as a form of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), enabling users to easily access ostensibly limitless hardware resources without the hassle of maintaining complex and expensive technology. Since then, the major cloud providers have become as much software solution providers as hardware providers, releasing more and more closed application solutions that run within their cloud, positioning their Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings over their IaaS offerings. The different SaaS solutions on offer answer an overly broad selection of technical requirements, to which the trinity each have their own custom implementations that compete with one another.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How we got here\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

Historically, while information has been quite opaque, the underlying hardware between the major platforms has remained largely homogenous, simply due to what Intel, AMD and Nvidia have on offer. This left cost-based differentiation as the main revenue strategy, driving innovations like spot and preemptible instances. But, the providers needed new ways to attract growth, and bundling in and releasing custom platform-specific software provided an exciting route to compete.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Customers now have to pick between seemingly similar software solutions that are beholden to a specific cloud provider, or alternatively a third-party non-locked-down software solution.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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A selection of NoSQL database offerings<\/p><\/div>\n

The traditional risks of lock in<\/span><\/h2>\n

On the surface, it makes sense for an existing GCP customer to choose Bigtable as the infrastructure and billing are already there. With Bigtable, they get a familiar consolidated experience. Yet, this obscures the hidden costs of cloud lock-in. Many of these drawbacks are familiar to most:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n