"When IT pros talk about vendor lock-in, what do they mean?
"Milberg: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, here is a definition of vendor lock-in: '... a situation in which a customer is dependent on a vendor for products and services and cannot move to another vendor without substantial costs. It is often used in the computer industry to denote the lack of compatibility between different systems which, intentionally or unintentionally, forces a customer to continue to use products and services from a particular vendor.'
"Terpstra: Vendor lock-in means that there exist particulars of a vendor's product that dictate how a customer may use the product and/or that constrain the ability of the customer to migrate to a platform of choice..."
