Lock-in by FDE

”The FDE engagement, generally, is that a company has an AI product and goes to the end user site, and part of the deal is they’re going to be learning things as they implement. They’re going to take back certain knowledge that makes the product better. But there’s a fine line."

There is a risk that those benefiting are the users’ close competitors, as FDEs share information.

Could an FDE be taking the user’s competitive advantage and passing it on to others? Saha said: “That would be a complete violation of the IP, right? That’s how fast things are moving. This is a concern I hear as I interact with end user clients.”

Then there is the risk of vendor lock-in. Gartner has warned that if FDEs become indispensable — because only they understand the workflows they built — keeping them full-time as consultants is neither economical nor strategic.

“We’re actually advising clients to understand the use cases they are going to be implementing well before FDEs come on site. If you’re doing an FDE engagement, figure out the exit strategy. Customers should figure out how they’re going to be taking over once the FDE resources go,” Saha said.

🔗 Vendors asking forward deployed engineers to make good on trillion-dollar AI bet