Ecosystem Scorecards Help CIOs Avoid Vendor Lock-In

To acquire technologies that drive positive business outcomes, IT departments have traditionally struck long-term deals with vendors that forge lasting relationships and deep technical ties. As IT modernization trends continue to shift from monolithic to distributed systems and best-of-breed capabilities, IT decision-makers have grown concerned about the costly perils of vendor lock-in, according to Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

In a November 2025 study of 500 IT decision makers across the globe, BCG found that 62% of IT buyers are concerned about the negative impacts of vendor lock-in with digital platforms, including the cost and complexity of switching platforms when needed, as well as loss of flexibility and control over their tech stack.

“The CIO must be an architect who builds, rather than be constrained by existing structure,” Rafay Baloch, CEO and founder of the cybersecurity firm RedSecLabs told The Forecast. 

“Companies with open systems will be more successful in the market in the long run.”

Concerns about vendor lock-in have grown in recent years due to rapid technological innovation in cloud services, data storage, and software-defined hybrid cloud management platforms. Big changes in the IT industry have also made many IT teams to reassess their strategies, especially since Broadcom acquired VMware in 2023, which brought changes to VMware product offerings, pricing and support. A year prior, The Forecast reported 28% of global IT professionals surveyed for the 2022 Enterprise Cloud Index said lock-in avoidance was a factor driving the change in strategies. For example, nearly 65% of those surveyed expected to run a multicloud IT model by 2024. 

Fear of future technical incompatibilities and loss of control over IT spending, sometimes from going “all in” with one provider, has driven many IT strategies to become more resilient and diversified. However, distributing IT loads across multiple dissimilar IT platforms and services creates complexity and new requirements, especially around choosing the right technology and service providers that align with an IT organization’s vision, values and strategy.

Instead of individual vendor evaluations, many enterprise CIOs are embracing the idea of ecosystem scorecards, according to Ken Herron, co-founder of vConversational, which helps companies turn human conversations, including phone calls, texts, emails and instant messages, into structured, usable data for use with AI and business intelligence tools. 

In a recent interview with The Forecast, Herron said isolated tools no longer reflect how work actually happens inside organizations. Instead of evaluating vendors based on the strength of any single feature set, he observed, CIOs are therefore using ecosystem scorecards to score vendors based on how well data, context and workflows move across systems.

A key reason for the shift is that interoperability has become an architectural requirement instead of a nice-to-have feature. Additionally, enterprises are realizing that critical business data, especially conversational and interaction data, gets trapped inside proprietary systems, causing inherited limitations, Herron explained. With AI adoption accelerating, he said, leaders are favoring vendors that align to open standards and portable data models over those that create new silos.

“The net effect is that interoperability, standards alignment and data durability are now weighted as heavily as cost or functionality because they directly impact enterprise agility over the next decade,” Herron said.

Using Scorecards Instead of Feature Checklists

CIOs used to select vendors by using detailed checklists to compare and contrast the features of their products. However, many CIOs are now realizing the limitations of this process and replacing it with scorecards, said Saksham Talwar, founder of the digital marketing and web development company PerfectlyOkay.

“Single-vendor stacks create fragile dependencies across compute, data and tooling,” Talwar told The Forecast in an interview. 

“Scorecards help CIOs compare vendors on integration effort, long-term fit and exit options instead of feature checklists.”

RedSecLabs CEO Baloch said ecosystem scorecards also help CIOs determine the most effective tools that can be integrated into existing system infrastructure.

“For instance, a niche threat-hunting platform may integrate into legacy identity systems if it can integrate into existing mature and tested connection methods,” Baloch said. “This approach allows organizations to block vendor-based security threats, improve system performance and select appropriate technology.”

Indeed, ecosystem scorecards may help CIOs strengthen cybersecurity, Baloch stressed. While homogeneous environments are easy targets, he said, cybercriminals have to put in extra work to breach ecosystems due to their inherent heterogeneity. For example, hackers must make the tools share their communications signals and have to account for mutual verification as well as fail-safe mechanisms, which is much harder to accomplish in ecosystems.

Creating an Ecosystem Scorecard

While they should reflect the company’s goals and needs, Talwar said all scorecards should include key points to measure, such as open APIs, data portability and clean identity integration. At the same time, scorecards should evaluate proven coexistence with other platforms in real production environments. Additionally, the CIO must require details in the scorecard to call out any tight coupling of bundled features.

Because reducing data silos is a top factor for achieving interoperability, the scorecard needs to address critical data, including downstream analytics, AI initiatives and governance efforts, noted Herron. 

He said scorecards should include questions such as: Can this data be reused elsewhere? Can it survive tool changes? And, can it be audited independent of the vendor?