Enterprise tech doesn’t fail in production. It fails in onboarding – when the wrong vendor is validated on promises instead of proof. That’s when the gaps start to show: integrations stall, controls don’t fit, outputs don’t hold up. What looked credible in a deck falls apart in delivery.
This isn’t just frustrating. It’s expensive. It’s risky. And it’s avoidable.
Yet many institutions are still signing vendor contracts without ever seeing how those tools behave in real conditions – with real data, real users, and real constraints.
That’s where vapourware enters the picture. And once it’s inside, it’s rarely a clean exit.
The real risk isn’t the vendor. It’s the process that let them through.
Most CIOs and Heads of Architecture don’t deliberately choose bad vendors. The issue is structural.
Without a way to validate real-world performance before a contract is signed, you’re relying on demos, reference calls, and theoretical fit.
“A proof-of-concept in a controlled, production-like environment will tell you more in two weeks than a pitch will in six months.”
And yet, many PoCs are either skipped entirely, run too late, or executed without the technical context that makes them meaningful.
The real failure isn’t when the tool underperforms. It’s when a vendor is treated as credible based on storytelling – not on how it performs in your stack, under your controls, with your constraints.
5 Warning Signs You’re Buying Vapourware
- No credible reference customers
- Features live only on the roadmap, not in the product.
- No API docs or clear technical architecture.
- Core functions require “custom builds.”
- Unclear ownership of risk and delivery
Each of these is a red flag. But more importantly, they’re all predictable – if the right validation process is in place.
The Cost of Skipping Structured Evaluation
When vapourware is onboarded, three things usually happen:
1. Rework
Integration teams end up spending months building scaffolding around an immature product – custom APIs, manual processes, and patch fixes that were never part of the original scope. This not only slows delivery but also creates brittle workflows that break under real-world conditions.
2. Sunk Cost
By the time gaps are discovered, you’ve already committed budgets, engineering resources, and internal credibility. The vendor evaluation cycle has eaten months, and reversing course means explaining to leadership why the promised value never materialised.
3. Escalation of Commitment
Even as risk grows – from compliance gaps to failed user acceptance testing — teams feel pressure to keep going. Nobody wants to admit it was the wrong choice, so you end up doubling down on a solution that was never ready for production.
According to Everest Group, 75% of enterprise tech implementations experience delays or cost overruns tied to inadequate pre-selection testing.
The truth is, by the time delivery teams are flagging problems, it’s often too late to pivot. You’re locked in. And worse – you’re committed to making something broken appear to work.
What It Looks Like In Practice: A Real-World Example
A global bank shortlisted a GenAI-powered chatbot to assist with customer operations across retail banking. The vendor offered an impressive roadmap: multilingual support, escalation triage, integration with core systems, and robust audit logging.
In demos, it looked flawless.
But when onboarding began, problems surfaced quickly:
- Prompts returned hallucinated responses for regulated product disclosures
- No audit trail was available to trace the chatbot's decision logic
- The model performed poorly on non-English inputs - a deal-breaker in key markets
- Risk teams weren’t informed until post-integration, triggering a stop order
The post-mortem revealed what many now recognise: The bank had bought into a demo. Not a deliverable.
A second evaluation was run using NayaOne’s Vendor Delivery Infrastructure (VDI), where vendors were tested against live scenarios, non-English data, and logging requirements.
This led to a more robust, board-approved selection – and a deployment that held up under audit.
How Vendor Delivery Infrastructure Changes The Outcome
Vendor Delivery Infrastructure (VDI) flips the entire vendor selection model.
Instead of relying on narrative, it gives institutions the capability to run structured, production-grade validation before any contracts are signed.
With VDI, enterprise teams can:
- Evaluate multiple vendors side by side under identical test conditions
- Simulate real-world usage with synthetic data that preserves compliance
- Measure performance, control alignment, and integration readiness
- Involve security, architecture, and procurement early - not after the fact
This is what separates promising vendors from proven solutions. And it’s what prevents months of rework, internal escalation, and failed delivery.
VDI isn’t a sandbox for innovation. It’s enterprise infrastructure for execution.
Evaluating a high-stakes vendor?
If you haven’t tested it under real-world conditions, you’re not validating – you’re guessing.
