Modern software systems
rarely fail all at once.
They drift.
System Drift is an independent observatory studying how organizations accumulate platform dependency, concentrate operational risk, and lose reversibility inside the infrastructure they rely on.
Lenses for reading dependency structure. System Drift publishes no dependency scores or rankings.
Recent publications from the institute
Long-form reports, dependency analyses, and operational essays — produced independently, without vendor sponsorship.
The quiet capture of organizational workflows
How small integration decisions compound into platform-defined operating models over 24–36 months.
Identity providers as single points of governance
Mapping cascade failure surfaces when a single identity layer mediates all internal access.
The three-cloud asymmetry, revisited
Why effective optionality between hyperscalers has narrowed despite a stable headline market share.
When SaaS pricing becomes infrastructure policy
An essay on the externalities of seat-based and consumption-based pricing inside long-lived organizations.
A directory of the platforms whose dependency surfaces we document
Each profile describes where dependency can form around a platform. Profiles do not score organizations: actual dependency is organization-specific, and System Drift publishes no numerical dependency rating.
Microsoft 365
Amazon Web Services
Salesforce
Snowflake
Okta
GitHub
Atlassian
Google Workspace
Documented changes with potential dependency implications
Published observations are based on traceable public sources such as vendor documentation, regulatory disclosures and documented incident reports. System Drift records changes where there is a credible dependency or operational implication.
No observations currently published.
Observations are added when a documented change has a credible connection to software dependency, reversibility, governance or operational concentration. Each observation is supported by a traceable source and separates the documented event from System Drift's interpretation.
Observations are independent and unaffiliated. Sources are recorded with provenance.
Five lenses for analyzing how organizations become dependent on the systems they use.
Operational Concentration
The share of an organization's daily workflows mediated by a single vendor, platform, or contract surface.
Reversibility
The realistic cost, time, and political capital required to exit a platform without degrading mission-critical operations.
Dependency Accumulation
How integrations, data formats, and trained behaviors compound over time into a structural inability to switch.
Infrastructure Drift
Gradual changes in vendor architecture, pricing, and policy that quietly reshape an organization's operating model.
Workflow Capture
The point at which an internal process is no longer separable from the platform it runs on.
We study modern software the way meteorologists study weather systems — patiently, structurally, and without selling umbrellas. Our work is independent, evidence-based, and written for the people inside organizations who can still steer.
System Drift accepts no vendor sponsorship, publishes no rankings and no dependency scores. Research is published periodically; there is no fixed publication schedule.