Most SMEs adopted Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace for convenience — few thought about what happens if they need to leave. When everything works, the question seems hypothetical. When a price increase arrives or the service goes down, the exit cost becomes suddenly very real.
What Does Lock-In Actually Mean?
Lock-in happens when data formats, proprietary integrations, and accumulated workflows make switching providers more expensive than staying. The platform works well — until it doesn't. At that point, the switching cost is no longer theoretical, and the negotiating position shifts entirely to the vendor.
Migration cost is not only technical. It includes retraining staff, rebuilding integrations, converting document formats, and rebuilding the processes that grew around the original platform.
Three Signs Your Business Is Already Locked In
- All company data lives in vendor storage with no regular export or offline backup
- Staff cannot work if the service is down for one hour
- Switching platforms would require rebuilding most business processes from scratch
If any of these apply, you have exposure — and it is worth quantifying before it becomes urgent.
Why This Matters for Compliance
GDPR Article 32 requires resilience and availability of personal data processing systems. Concentration in a single vendor is a documented risk under GDPR. Supervisory authorities expect a continuity plan, not a verbal commitment — and "the vendor handles it" is not an acceptable answer during an investigation.
If your provider experiences a prolonged outage or changes their data residency policies, your compliance posture can shift overnight without any action on your part.
What You Can Do
- Set up a regular export schedule and keep offline backups of critical data
- Document which integrations would fail on migration day
- Review your vendor SLA — what is their uptime commitment, and what happens when they miss it?
None of these steps require switching providers. They are basic risk hygiene — and they are exactly what regulators expect to see when they ask about your business continuity planning.
Curious how dependent your M365 tenant actually is? Book a free audit — we map your data flows and flag concentration risks at no charge.