Bedrock, Vertex Or Build It Yourself: The AI Infrastructure Decision Most CIOs Get Backwards
CIO, Monday, August 31st, 2026
Argues CIOs should treat AI compute as a swappable utility and build vendor-neutral gateways rather than lock in long-term.
Richard Ewing argues that the Bedrock-vs-Vertex-vs-build-your-own debate is framed wrongly: AI processing power is a temporary, interchangeable utility, not a permanent infrastructure commitment.
Signing long contracts anchored to today's leading models is risky because computational capability commoditizes fast.
The recommended pattern is a vendor-neutral gateway layer that keeps corporate data and workflows portable, so an organization can move providers when pricing or performance shifts without operational disruption. The piece reframes the decision from picking a winner to preserving optionality.