The increasing use of cloud computing services results in an increased risk of lock-in that is source of anxiety for users facing the risk of having their data to be hosted online without the possibility of migrating them on their own IT resources or on competitors' platforms. In this preliminary research, we deal with the problem of the management of lock-in in case of use of cloud computing services. We aim to answer six questions: (1) What is the lock-in? (2) Is the lock-in perceived as a major problem? (3) What are the causes of lock-in? (4) What is the impact of lock-in on the users? (5) How can the users avoid lock-in? and (6) Is the general public concerned with the problem of lock-in? Our paper is organized in three sections. The first section presents the methodology used for this study. The second section details the results. This section identifies in particular six mechanisms to reduce the risk of lock-in. The third section discusses the results and suggests further work.
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