Cloud vendor lock-in is different from PC vendor lock-in

The IBM PC hardware was open, yet the business model of the PC software market was a fragmented one, with each vendor providing a mostly closed system.

The emerging model of cloud-based computing is a fragmented market, with each vendor providing a mostly closed system, but the nature of the closed-ness is quite different from the PC market.

In the PC market, the strategy was to allow data on any platform but use proprietary formats to tie data to an application. Microsoft Office applications used complex formats for their files, formats that made it difficult to use the files with any other application.

For cloud-based systems the fragmentation will be around data storage, not applications or the format of data. Vendors will strive to keep data in their storage system (Google Docs, Microsoft OneDrive) and push apps onto multiple platforms (Windows, iOS, Android).

Google Docs, Microsoft Office 365, and other cloud-based services use private storage systems. Create a document in Google Docs and it is stored in Google Drive. Create a spreadsheet in Office 365 and it is stored in Microsoft's OneDrive. These are private storage systems -- only the Google Docs apps can access Google Drive, and only Office 365 can access OneDrive.

We have limited visibility into these private storage systems. We cannot "see" our data, other than through the API and UI offered by the vendor. We cannot directly access our data. This allows the vendor to store the data in any convenient format: as a file, in a relational database, or in some other form.

Accessibility is what allows one to change from one office suite to another and still read your old documents. The new office suite must be able to read the format, of course, but such operations are possible. Microsoft used this trick to convert users from Wordperfect and Lotus 1-2-3 to Microsoft Word and Excel. Open Office uses this trick to read .DOC and .XLS files.

Cloud-based offerings don't allow such tricks. One cannot use Office 365 to read a document stored in Google Drive. (Not because the format is different, but because Office 365 cannot reach into Google Drive. Google Docs cannot reach into OneDrive, either.)

Cloud-based systems do allow one to download documents to your PC. When you do, they are stored in files (that's what PCs use). You can they upload the document to a different cloud-based system. But keep in mind: this download/upload trick works only while the cloud-based systems allow you to download a document to your PC. The owners of the cloud-based system can change or remove that capability at any time.

Switching from one cloud-based system to another may be difficult, and perhaps impossible. If a cloud vendor offers no way to get data "out", then the data, once entered into the system, remains there.

Vendors want to lock customers into their systems. The strategy for PC software was to use storage formats that tied data to an application. The strategy for cloud-based systems is not the format but the storage location. Look for Microsoft, Google, and others to offer convenient ways to transfer your data from your PC into their cloud.

And also look for convenient ways to get the data out of that cloud.