There isn't an alternative inasmuch as there isn't a drop-in replacement. Thus, there are switching costs, which thus represent financial (and counterparty!) ri

There isn't an alternative inasmuch as there isn't a drop-in replacement. Thus, there are switching costs, which thus represent financial (and counterparty!) risks. Compare this situation to Dell v. Lenovo v. HP commodity x86 servers: if one goes out of business, you can go to the others (and proactively use this as leverage when negotiating). EDIT: Or more realistically, you don't need to do much/any work to run your service on a Dell v. an IBM.