The Substitution Escrow Threshold: When "Compatible With" Becomes Safe Enough to Buy

This research introduces the 'Substitution Escrow Threshold' framework, a five-condition model designed to evaluate the true potential for future substitution options implied by technology compatibility claims. It distinguishes between compatibility claims that genuinely reduce institutional risk and those that primarily minimize initial integration costs, providing a structured approach for enterprise infrastructure buyers to assess these claims.

Why it matters

This framework offers a critical tool for strategic decision-making in technology procurement and architecture. By providing a method to rigorously evaluate compatibility claims, it helps organizations minimize long-term institutional risk, avoid vendor lock-in, and ensure true operational flexibility and resilience in their infrastructure investments.

Key insights

• Enterprise infrastructure buyers often rely on compatibility claims (e.g., "S3-compatible") as indicators of future substitution options.
• Many compatibility claims do not adequately 'escrow' the promised substitution path, leading to potential future risks.
• The 'Substitution Escrow Threshold' framework consists of five conditions to determine when a compatibility claim genuinely mitigates institutional risk:
• These conditions are boundary closure, executable conformance, custody independence, state and operations reversibility, and extension quarantine.
• The framework helps differentiate between compatibility claims that reduce risk and those that only reduce first-integration costs.
• The paper applies this framework to five infrastructure cases (OCI, Kubernetes, OpenTelemetry, S3, PostgreSQL) to illustrate distinct outcomes.

Source

arXiv — Computers and Society — https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.21221