Most large organizations today would never choose just one vendor to run their data and AI initiatives. A single, preferred cloud vendor? Perhaps, but multi-cloud and hybrid adoption have grown, particularly as these organizations prepare for the next, inevitable public cloud outage. Companies need flexible options on where and when they run their workloads in the most cost-optimized ways, say when there’s an economic downturn or as budgets tighten.
If you take a glimpse into the data and AI architectures of Fortune 2000 IT organizations, you’ll find a myriad of technologies implemented from the vendors scattered as dots across Gartner Magic Quadrants and Forrester Waves.
When you’re active with mergers and acquisitions and needing a quick win, it’s easy to buy into the hype of certain vendors’ claims. And despite their best intentions to maintain an open ecosystem approach, these large organizations sometimes fail to read the fine print before investing heavily into overhyped offerings.
The result? Accidental architectures with brick walls—locking organizations into single vendors, which can lead to higher costs, limited flexibility, and slower innovation.
This blog explores the most common vendor lock-in pitfalls and the critical questions you should ask during platform evaluations, with examples of how Cloudera’s open data architecture helps you sidestep these challenges.
Forced Costly Cloud Migrations and Lack of Support for Data Fabric and Data Sovereignty
Does your data and AI platform run where my data lives?
Cloudera runs anywhere your data lives, so you can securely process and govern distributed data across hybrid environments with the same, consistent platform. Cloudera’s integration of Trino takes this even further. It enables fast, federated queries across data warehouses, lakes, and on-premises systems—without moving data. By centralizing access and accelerating insights, Trino is a key enabler for organizations building unified data fabrics and preparing for the next frontier: agentic AI.
Cloud-only data and AI platforms can’t handle on-premises data without forcing cloud migrations that cost millions of dollars in rewrites and refactoring—at the end of which you’re locked into a single vendor.
Does your platform allow me to connect data across silos, from on-premises systems to public clouds and everywhere in between?
That’s what a data fabric supports—allowing data to be accessed and used anywhere, by anyone, securely and efficiently. In recognition of our strengths in this area, Cloudera was just named a Leader in the 2025 Forrester Wave for Data Fabric Platforms.
Vendors that don’t meet the minimum data management requirements to support data fabric use cases aren’t featured in Forrester’s report. Take note of popular platform vendors that are missing from this evaluation—investing in their solutions will force your organization to move all of your data into a single system.
Can your platform run in air-gapped environments to deliver sovereign deployments?
Cloudera delivers private AI by supporting fully air-gapped, sovereign deployments where control planes and data never leave your environment—a requirement for regulated industries, particularly the public sector. Other platforms require constant connection to their control plane, making true private AI impossible.
Catalogs that Only Work Inside a Data Estate with Limited Functionality
Does your data catalog work across my entire data estate?
Cloudera (and particularly Cloudera Octopai Data Lineage) provides full-stack lineage and governance across all your data platforms. Other platforms only govern data that you've migrated into that platform, breaking data mesh architectures. Also, Cloudera Octopai Data Lineage delivers visual lineage out of the box with full integration—this is a key differentiator compared to other vendors that offer an API endpoint but no tooling, UI, or integrations.
Does your data and AI platform deliver complete governance?
Cloudera Shared Data Experience (SDX) has been production-proven for years, providing complete governance across all workloads.
Other vendors fall short in this area: one announced catalog offerings years ago, with features like tag-based governance only recently reaching GA—three years after it was initially announced—while critical capabilities like attribute-based access control remain in public preview. Operating on a two-to-three year gap between big announcements and production delivery is the definition of a hype machine.
Hidden Costs, Lack of Guardrails, and an Immature Data Warehouse
Do you offer transparent pricing with guardrails to avoid bill shock?
Cloudera offers transparent pricing without hidden multipliers or consumption traps. Other vendors introduce features without guardrails, hitting customers with thousands of dollars in surprise bills for even just one day of testing.
Can your data warehouse handle true enterprise demand?
Cloudera Data Warehouse provides production-grade data warehouse capabilities with high availability (HA) and seamless scaling.
While other vendors have added autoscaling and HA, it’s important to review whether these are compatible or separate functions—if the latter, you’ll be forced to choose one or the other. Additional limitations to be on the lookout for are regional and vendor-managed storage.
Limited Data Streaming with a Tax on Dubious Performance Gains
Can your data and AI platform handle data-intensive streaming workloads?
Cloudera delivers production-proven Apache Flink, Kafka, and NiFi for complex streaming workloads. Other vendors can't compete against Flink, specifically, and have no streaming play.
Do you charge for performance gains on streaming workloads?
Cloudera Streaming has no premium pricing tiers. Others force a ~3× cost multiplier, even though streaming workloads often see no performance gain. It’s not uncommon for these vendors to charge you more when you optimize—up to 80% more, based on internal analyses.
Does your platform deliver true open source Kafka or a proprietary, unproven version?
Cloudera relies on mature, open-source Apache Kafka with a proven track record. Others don’t run Apache Kafka at all. They ship a proprietary Kafka-lookalike that’s still early, unproven at scale, and wrapped in opaque pricing.
Lack of Clarity Around AI Ownership (vs. API Access Rentals) and AI Assistants (vs. Chatbots)
With your data and AI platform, will I own my AI models or do you simply charge me for API access?
Cloudera AI enables companies to own and operate their AI models privately on their infrastructure. Other vendors act as “middlemen” for public APIs, exposing customers to sudden service cutoffs and uncapped costs while collecting massive fees.
Is your platform infused with reliable AI assistants to improve productivity?
Cloudera AI Assistants are embedded across the platform from day one with genuine intelligence. Other vendors are repackaging basic retrieve-and-respond chatbots as innovation—but if it can't trace data lineage, enforce governance, or reason across structured and unstructured data—it's just search with a better interface.
Vendors Jumping On The “Open” and “Unified” Bandwagon Without the Infrastructure to Support These Claims
How open is your data and AI platform, really?
Cloudera supports Apache Iceberg and Hudi today across multiple engines without vendor lock-in. Other vendors claim an open approach, but their table format support is often several years away, or still in beta, and essentially remains proprietary, trapping customers.
What level of support does your platform provide for Apache Iceberg?
Cloudera supports Apache Iceberg with full read and write capabilities across the platform without vendor lock-in. Cloudera’s Iceberg REST Catalog further enhances data sharing by delivering an open, universal metadata layer that enables zero-copy access across popular platforms, engines, and teams.
Other vendors claim openness, but their Iceberg support is still in beta. And their “unified” table format? Practitioners skip it in real deployments—using it means duplicating data or sacrificing performance, since their optimizations only work on proprietary formats.
Avoid Vendor Lock-In: Choose an (Actually) Open, Unified, Governed Data and AI Platform
Cloudera is the only data and AI platform company that large organizations trust to bring AI to their data anywhere it lives. Unlike other providers, Cloudera delivers a consistent cloud experience that converges public clouds, data centers, and the edge, leveraging a proven open-source foundation. As the pioneer in big data, Cloudera empowers businesses to apply AI and assert control over 100% of their data, in all forms, delivering unified security, governance, and real-time predictive insights. The world’s largest organizations across all industries rely on Cloudera to transform decision-making and ultimately boost bottom lines, safeguard against threats, and save lives.
To learn more about how to securely prepare, integrate, and analyze data at scale with Cloudera, check out our product demos or sign up for a free 5-day trial.
