getoutofyour.cloud
Evidence / lock-in
Updated 14 Sep 2026

You can leave the cloud. Can your architecture?

Vendor lock-in is not one egress fee. It is the accumulated cost of proprietary APIs, identity, licenses, contracts, skills and untested assumptions.

The easiest platform to enter may be the hardest one to leave.

Lock-in is measurable

The UK Competition and Markets Authority found that egress fees, interoperability barriers and software licensing restricted switching and multi-cloud. AWS and Microsoft later announced changes after regulatory engagement, while the CMA said further work remained.

Read the CMA action package →

Account control is infrastructure control

In 2025, one AWS customer reported losing access to ten years of work during a verification dispute. Support described resources as terminated; after public escalation, AWS restored the account and data.

The boundary

It was one reported customer case, not evidence of a systemic deletion policy. The useful question is narrower: can your recovery process operate when the provider account cannot?

Test the exit

  • Export data into usable, documented formats.
  • Inventory managed APIs and proprietary services.
  • Calculate contract, egress and refactoring cost.
  • Recover identity outside the primary account.
  • Run the workload in its target environment.
The point: access is not portability, and configuration is not ownership.