Note
In this article, I elaborate on the risk of vendor locking and how careful solution design helps prepare for the emergency. To be honest, that is not the main benefit of owning a business-tailored IoT solution, and this topic emerged on its own during the writing process. First, I considered it a side track, but then I realized it is an important perspective to share with you.
Enjoy this text and share your experiences with me!
Introduction
My previous article had a somewhat pessimistic (or rather realistic) tone. The goal was to describe the real-life situations, not to discourage you from building a custom IoT solution. Based on my professional experience, I am convinced that creating business-tailored IT solutions gives you the ultimate leverage.
What is the leverage, you ask?
Actually, we are talking about multiple forms of leverage that you have at your disposal. Let’s start with the non-obvious one.
Vendor Independence
The term vendor-locking is frequently used and often misunderstood. Despite that, the risk is real - you do not want to tie the future of your business to some external company (aka the vendor). That strong dependency creates several vulnerabilities.
What if that company decides to:
- Increase their prices 10x.
- Remove/discontinue the feature your core business depends on.
- Refuse to add a feature critical to expanding your business.
- Gets acquired by a bigger player with a different strategy.
- Or simply goes bankrupt and exits the market.
All of the above can happen to any vendor; the “too big to fail” concept is not applicable in the ever-changing modern IT landscape.
If you’ve been following my content, you might ask the following question: What about building a custom IoT platform leveraging the AWS cloud? The mentioned risks apply to AWS as a vendor.
Cloud Vendor Lock-In
That is a great question! You are absolutely correct; at any given moment, AWS can change its pricing, discontinue a service (which actually has happened a few times recently), or go bankrupt (although this is less probable, it is theoretically possible).
If all of that is true, why should you even consider building your solution utilizing the AWS (or any other) cloud? There are several aspects to unpack:
Changing from one cloud provider to another is perfectly doable! Yes, it requires time and money to execute, but that is always an option (even though numerous people will try to convince you otherwise).
Even if you use some proprietary services (like AWS Lambda), the business logic and source code belong to you. Sure, it will require some changes, but most of it will be portable to whatever new environment you choose. The cloud vendor provides you with tools, but the final creation is much more than that and belongs to you.
What about the “T”
What about the "T" in the IoT (Internet of Things) solution? The "T" stands for the Thing, which is a physical or virtual asset that gathers data about its environment (delivery truck, manufacturing process, etc.). How does replacing the cloud provider impact your devices? It depends on the solution design and following best practices.
The switch is straightforward if you use industry-standard protocols (like MQTT) to facilitate communication between your devices and the cloud endpoint. From the device’s perspective, you will need to update the endpoint address and communication parameters, but the overall firmware logic typically remains the same. The backend changes would require more attention, as you will have to migrate the logic between platforms. Similarly to the business logic, you already own the device-related source code, so the switch is feasible.
The crucial aspect is moving the device identities. You must ensure that this part is carefully implemented and thoroughly tested before initiating the actual migration. Device identity management is one of the crucial aspects of operating an IoT platform; although it is a bit technical, I suggest that you, the business owner, familiarize yourself with this topic. Once again, if your solution leverages Private Keys and X.509 Certificates, there is nothing to worry about.
Summary
Those are the main challenges my customers typically face when changing vendors for hosting their custom IoT solutions. Migrating from one cloud provider to another is not something you hope for - that is rather an emergency situation. As with any crisis, it is better to prepare for it upfront and have an “escape plan” than to be caught off guard. Careful solution design is the best risk mitigation I am aware of.
Stay safe and till the next time!
PS. I’m happy to answer any migration-related questions, so please reach out if you have any doubts.