Most software developers work under tight deadlines so finding software that makes their jobs easier or helps getting the job done more quickly is always a good thing, right?
Well, maybe not.
Consider the case when the company that makes your cool Rapid Application Development (RAD) software tool decides to do something “it” considers important, but you don’t see the benefit for you or for your organization at all.
For example, maybe the company decides it’s time to jump onto the “Forced Subscription Model” (as opposed to the “perpetual license”, which has long been the norm). Maybe the company never tells you anything about future direction leading to more uncertainty.
Then, after multiple software versions, you find that company won’t support the current product version the instant the new product version ships. And, to make matters worse, that product may not function properly when there’s a new version of the OS. And, of course, the company’s only suggestion at this point is to “upgrade”. Yeah, right.
And you have work to do, but now the software isn’t working!
Assuming only constant costs increases, when costs go up, the money for those costs needs to come from somewhere. Either you eat those costs or you pass them along to your customers.
Say you decide to stick with the current version, but that version all of a sudden has bugs with a new OS release. You don’t want to upgrade since could mean you have to sign up for a new subscription model. But, best case, if the fixes are only in the new product, you’d at least have to upgrade for “bug fixes”.
How do companies get away with this behavior? (Hint: a basically good product in a niche market with little or no competition.) Look at ever-increasing cable company prices for another example.
In any case, you now decide it’s time to look for alternatives, but because you picked this unique (read: Proprietary) product, there really aren’t any readily available alternatives like one that could read your files natively and let you keep working.
You lack, for example, an alternative like OpenOffice, LibreOffice, or any of the other MS-compatible office suites if you wanted to, say, ditch MS Office. Or, say you use a Java IDE and the company starts to charge money for a subscription model. Now, in this software space, you have other alternatives, some free, so you can leave quickly if you want. Yes, you may lose some productivity, but you can keep working. It’s interesting to note that the Java IDEs that charge yearly fees don’t charge that much. Hmmm, maybe we’re on to something.
But without these alternatives available, you may be stuck for the time being.
It’s unlikely that anyone considers a vendor “lock-in” issue when they get that fancy software that lets them “be more productive” right away. And of course it’s always possible that you’ll still be able to stick with that company too, despite the lock-in, even if you can pass along the costs.
But what about future cost increases and uncertainty in general.
Thus, it’s a good idea to consider the cost of proprietary solutions up front as they’re not always the cost saver, due to productivity increases found, as hoped or even promised.
If the software you’re using was database software, as one example, a possible solution would be to come up with a migration plan to move to another vendor. That plan’s costs would need to be carefully considered up front and for the long term.
So, carefully consider that RAD software up front and possible migration alternatives to handle various (not only the ones mentioned here) scenarios!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Please read our disclaimer available from our home page