When Broadcom acquired VMware and restructured its licensing, many enterprises were caught flat-footed. Some saw modest price increases; others saw costs multiply. But the real damage wasn’t financial — it was the realization that they had no response plan.
“The teams that come out best aren’t the ones who reacted the fastest,” said Heather Clauson Haughian, co-founder and technology attorney at CM Law. “They’re the ones who already knew what switching would take before they ever had to ask.”
That’s a hard standard, and most organizations don’t meet it. The CIOs who do share a common approach: They treat vendor risk as an ongoing practice, not a crisis response.
As companies rely more on partners, risk follows
Since the pandemic, companies have accelerated their reliance on external partners, including for core strategic capabilities once built in-house. Cloud adoption, AI platform investments, talent shortages and the need to keep pace with competitors have pushed organizations…
