Do you have a TCO problem or a vendor lock-in problem?

The text explores the challenges associated with cloud data warehouses, particularly focusing on issues like total cost of ownership (TCO) and vendor lock-in, which arise when companies become overly reliant on a single vendor's proprietary technologies. Vendor lock-in occurs as vendors create friction that deters customers from switching providers, often through high costs and complex migrations. This dependency not only limits business agility and innovation but also inflates operational costs through data duplication and reliance on proprietary formats. The text suggests that federated data architectures, such as those offered by Starburst, provide a solution by enabling a unified, vendor-agnostic platform that abstracts storage and allows seamless data access across multiple sources. Starburst's approach, which decouples storage from compute and offers connectors to numerous data sources, is presented as a way to enhance data portability, reduce costs, and foster innovation by mitigating the constraints of traditional cloud data warehouses.