What is vendor lock-in risk, and how does a multi-cloud approach mitigate it for SAP customers?

Vendor lock-in is the risk of becoming so deeply dependent on one provider's proprietary services, pricing structure, and operational model that switching away becomes prohibitively expensive or technically impractical — leaving the customer with reduced negotiating leverage and exposure to that single vendor's roadmap, pricing changes, or service disruptions.

flowchart LR
    A[Single provider deep integration] --> B[High switching cost]
    B --> C[Reduced negotiating leverage]

    D[Multi-cloud / abstracted architecture] --> E[Lower switching cost per workload]
    E --> F[Retained leverage and flexibility]

A multi-cloud approach mitigates this by keeping at least some workloads portable and avoiding architecture that's irreversibly tied to one provider's proprietary services — though this mitigation isn't free: designing for portability (using more standard, less provider-specific services) can mean forgoing some of the deeper, more convenient proprietary capabilities a single provider might otherwise offer, a trade-off senior architects have to weigh deliberately rather than assuming portability is costless.