Two weeks ago, we held the first Docker Athens User Group meetup for the season — it was a blast. The attendants were more than expected and we would engage in discourse until 10pm+. There, I had the opportunity to kick off the event with my talk on how to Stop breaking the bank with bare metal and Docker.
A central point in my talk, is avoiding vendor lock-in. Going all-in for the cloud providers managed solutions —especially ones with proprietary technologies and protocols— can make it almost impossible for a software company to change vendors. This poses a great risk in business, since being unable to change a vendor can literally put you out of business. Contrary to that, I talked about our setup at LOGIC, utilizing Docker Swarm on bare-metal, and highlighted our expertise in assisting companies transition to similar setups.
A person from the audience asked the following question though; “OK, let’s assume that we hire LOGIC and migrate payloads to bare metal and avoid vendor lock-in from a cloud provider. Are we now locked-in with a consultant, who is the sole expert in operating and administering our infrastructure?”. Quite honestly this is a great question that indeed needs to be answered.
No handcuffs. This is Principle 6. of LOGIC. There is no point in working to avoid vendor lock-in, just to get into consultant lock-in — it’s the exact same thing. One crucial aspect of the consultant's role is to drive the client's growth and autonomy. There is no point in maintaining a contract purely for tactical reasons, while the client is looking for freedom and autonomy. This is not only bad for the client, but it also hurts the consultant’s reputation. All these need to be crystal clear before a consultant-client relationship starts.
Lock-ins can become an unnecessary risk in business. Avoiding them is crucial. And most importantly, only when you have the necessary freedom you can get the most out of a consultant relationship.
