How to read the AI vendor landscape.
Every vendor's deck looks different. Underneath, they're all building the same five lanes, left to right, wrapped by a control plane. Drop your candidates in and two things show up: where they pile up — the same capability bought several times over, which is where the lock-in fight is — and the one lane none of them fills. We're not here to do your architecture. We're here to make sense of the mess.
Compose your stack — click the vendors you're weighing
Click the vendors you're weighing above, or hit Try an example. Each keeps its own row, so you can read straight across the lanes and watch the Rubric column stay empty.
Tip: click any vendor cell to drill in. You'll see how that vendor draws its own stack (their layer names), the same thing mapped onto our frame, and the one layer they never name. Click a lane header to see what every vendor calls that lane.
They're all selling the same pipeline
Different marketing names, one structure. Click a lane to see the translation: what each vendor calls their librarian, their library, their control plane.
They pile up in the middle
Everyone builds their own librarian and control plane. That's the same capability bought several times over. It's exactly where the lock-in fight is. Compose deliberately.
Nobody owns the Rubric
The rule for whether an answer is right in your business, which no vendor can write for you. That's the one lane you must own. No one can copy it, because it was never theirs to write.
The map is the diagnosis. Two doors out, one for each half of the argument.
Architecture Audit
Which lanes to rent, which to compose yourself, and where the lock-in fight actually sits in your stack.
See the engagement →Knowledge Audit
Find and codify the Rubric — the one lane no vendor fills — so your judgement becomes an asset you own and keep portable.
See the engagement →Vendor placements grounded in our verified corpora (control-plane · data-platform · risk-mitigation · harness-landscape · competitor-scan · pricing), 16 Jun 2026. Each cell carries how we know it (verified · relayed · mapped-by-us · open question), so the map shows its own confidence. Sector context (community housing · aged care) and AU-residency postures are the same shared taxonomy as the role lens; the CHP system names are single-source and the residency postures are mostly open questions — both on the research backlog. Time-sensitive: vendor product-names churn fast (re-verify within ~30 days) and re-verify GA dates + pricing before any client use. TechnologyOne's lanes are mapped by us, not drawn by the vendor. Plain-English lane names by design.