How can building owners avoid vendor lock-in?

Lock-in rarely announces itself at purchase. It surfaces years later, when an owner wants a different integrator, a new analytics tool or a better price at renewal, and finds that the configuration, the mappings, the licences or the history are all held by one supplier.

The way to avoid it is to make replacement practical: to ensure that another competent supplier could operate, extend or replace a system using the owner's own documentation, rights and data. Open protocols such as BACnet help, but only partly. A system can speak an open protocol and still be very hard to leave.

Nor is the goal to eliminate every proprietary component. Specialist products will remain proprietary, and that can be a fair price for what they deliver. What matters is that each dependency is visible, proportionate and something you can exit.

Where the dependencies hide

Regulation offers some support. The EU Data Act (Regulation (EU) 2023/2854), which has applied since 12 September 2025, gives the user of a connected product a right to obtain the data its use generates and to have it shared with a third party, and sets rules for switching between data processing services, including cloud services. It does not, however, write your contract for you. Specify the access and exit arrangements you need, and ask your legal advisers how the regulation applies to your case.

Write exit into the contract, then test it

The tender and contract should require documented exports of records, relationships and history in named formats, with a delivery timescale for a full export and the supplier's rates for assisting. Configuration files, programs and interface documentation should be handed over at each project stage, not only at the end. The contract should say what happens to data after termination, covering retention, deletion and confirmation, and the owner, not the supplier, should hold the administrator credentials.

Paper rights are only half the job. During acceptance, request a representative export and ask a different team or tool to use it. A file that can be downloaded but not meaningfully reused is weak evidence of portability.

The cheaper quotation is not always the cheaper system

Lock-in often lives in the commercial model more than in the technology, which is why whole-life cost matters more than the headline price.

On the hardware quotation, A is €12,000 cheaper. Over five years, once the access and exit costs the owner actually needs are included, it is €8,000 dearer. The lesson is to price the access you will need, not just the devices.

Habits that keep alternatives alive

Good procurement keeps options open long after the contract is signed. Separating hardware, software and services allows each to be replaced on its own. Documented, widely supported protocols and interfaces are preferable wherever they meet the need. A current register of systems, versions, licences and credentials saves a scramble later. And re-tendering support from time to time, even when the product stays, confirms that a market still exists.