To start, I want to be clear I am trying to understand not criticizing, and mistakes are how institutional knowledge grows.
Your last paragraph hints at retention struggles which complicates the issue.
But was vendor mitigation not part of the evaluation? I get that most companies view governance and compliance as a pay to play issue, but there has always been an issue with rapidly changing areas and single source suppliers.
I admit to having my own preferences and being almost completely ignorant about what your needs are, but I have seen the value in having a rabbit to pull out of the hat.
If employee retention doesn’t allow for departure of individuals without complete loss of institutional knowledge I guess my position wouldn’t hold.
But during the rise of cloud computing I introduced an openstack install in our sandbox, not because I thought that we would stay on a private cloud but because it allowed our team to pull back the covers and understand what our cloud vendor was doing.
It was an adoption accelerator that enabled us to choose a vendor that was appropriate and to avoid the long tail of implementation.
I was valuable as a pivot when AMD killed seamicro with short notice, and the full cloud migration period was dramatically shortened.
I have a dozen other examples, but it is like stock options, volatility and uncertainty dramatically increase the value of keeping your options open.
We will have vendors fold, and a single source only story couples you org to the success of that vendor.
IMHO There is a huge difference between tying your success to an Oracle, who may be ‘safe’ if expensive as a captive customer and doing the same in uncertain markets.
Would you be willing (or able) to share more?