Discussion on:

In the cloud, power shifts from providers to consumers

Try moving from Hotmail to Gmail or Google Apps. You can move your email and your contacts fairly easily for a single user. Now do it for an enterprise.

Regardless of how easy it is to move the contents of your account, how hard is it to move your email address. Unlike cell phones, I don't believe you can move your email address from one provider to another.

How about moving from SalesForce.com to QuickBase CRM or Really Simple Systems CRM. Again, you can move over a single person company fairly easily. Not so with an enterprise.

How about moving from an Azure-based system to an Amazon AWS-based system? Hmmm.... not so easy.

I seriously doubt that a cloud-based system gives you any less vendor lock in than an on-premise system.

I'd argue that cloud based system are even harder to migrate away from because you often have no access to the underlying data store.

I can move from PeopleSoft to SAP (ok, not easily, but I can do it) because I have direct access to the data and the APIs in an on-premise installation.

Using hosted alternatives there is generally no access to the underlying data and customers are completely dependent on whatever APIs (usually web services or REST services) the vendor chooses to make available.

I would see cloud can lessen vendor lock-in but at the same time cuts freedom of choices.