Lock-in is not automatically bad. Managed services buy real time, and the alternative is often running the same thing worse. The failure is not choosing a vendor; it is choosing one without knowing what leaving would cost.
Price the exit before you enter
Three questions answer most of it. Where does the data live and can you extract it in a usable format? How much of your business logic ends up expressed in the vendor's language rather than yours? How long would a migration take if you started tomorrow?
The asymmetry
Adoption happens when the team has time and enthusiasm. Migration happens when the vendor raises prices, changes terms, or is acquired, which is precisely when the team has neither. Decisions made in the first state are executed in the second.
Where standards genuinely pay
- Data formats and protocols, where an open choice costs nothing extra.
- Identity, because migrating authentication touches every system you own.
- Anything holding your operational history, which is the asset you cannot rebuild.
Take proprietary advantage at the edges. Keep the core in formats you could walk away with.