About Rowan O'Donoghue
I’ve always been a fixer.
Before I ever stood on a stage talking about digital sovereignty or vendor lock-in, I was the guy tearing things apart just to understand how they worked — and the engineer putting them back together (usually better than they started 😎).
I’m old-skool. I found love early for programming in BASIC when I was a young teenager, which later expanded to Assembler, COBOL, C#, and that oh-so-glorious era when software was something you built and owned, not rented on a monthly plan with an upgrade ultimatum attached.
“Impossible” was never really in my vocabulary.
If something broke, I fixed it (literally had my brothers soldering iron out!)
I had a real insatiable appetite and curiousity for how things "worked".
I also had a love for using technology to "build" new things.
If a system didn’t make sense, I just rebuilt it.
And if someone said, “That’s just how it is,” I took it as a personal challenge.
Later along my career I realised something unsettling:
The technology industry stopped building technology that empowered people. It started building a system that controlled them.
That discovery shaped everything that came next.
Assimilated > Indoctrinated > Awakening
I didn’t start out as a challenger. I started on the inside.
My career began in technical support for some of the big OEMs. The ones with the glossy brochures, the rush to get customers off a call quickly to meet a published SLA, and the unspoken expectation that customers should be grateful for whatever they’re given.
I know what real enterprise support looks like.
I’ve lived the 2 a.m. crises, the deployment nightmares, the commissioning puzzles, the technical disasters, the failed backups, and the political tightrope of being caught between a vendor’s roadmap and a customer’s reality.
I carry the emotional and physical scars of dragging mission-critical systems back from the brink. I wouldnt change one minute of it, but those experiences taught me more about risk, precision, and responsibility than any certification ever could.
And yes — I was assimilated too. But I've since repented for my sins!
I drank the Kool-Aid. I believed the dogma. I pushed the upgrade treadmill on customers because I genuinely thought it was the right way.
But then I saw the truth: the industry wasn’t built for the customer - it was built to control the customer.
So I walked away from the path obedience, and toward the path of independence.
Industry Operator > Challenger > Thought Leader
For over three decades, I’ve been in the rooms where billion-euro decisions get made.
I’ve worked with the world’s largest organisations across banking, insurance, government, and global enterprise IT.
I’ve watched, again and again, how vendors wield fear, untruths, undue pressure, deadlines, license audits, and lifecycle cliffs to keep customers compliant. It's the dark side of IT that makes my blood boil.
So I co-founded Origina to rewrite the rules.
We built independent software maintenance into a global movement.
Over the last decade I demonstrated the "art of the possible" to show that it was possible to independently fix defects, address vulnerabilites, and make software products better than what the OEM did with them.
We gave organisations an abiltiy to back the control they’d been conditioned to surrender.
We proved they could extend software lifecycles, avoid forced upgrades, and redirect millions toward innovation instead of vendor dividends.
And along that journey, I found my voice. A challenger’s voice, a storyteller’s voice, a voice that calls out the industry bullshit & myths the industry trains us to accept.
Cars, Code & Control
When I’m not dissecting the software industry, you’ll find me in my garage. My second lab. My passion.
I maintain a collection of classic and performance cars, everything from a 1936 Packard Roadster to a modern Bentley GTC. Working on them reminds me why I fell in love with engineering in the first place: clarity, innovation, craftsmanship, and control.
A carburettor never upsells me. A classic V8 doesn’t stop working because someone in California discontinued support. A 1930s wiring loom doesn’t phone home. I would argue these cars are nearly more reliable than their modern counterparts! My cars keep me grounded.
They remind me of a truth that applies equally to enterprise IT. When you own the machine, you own the outcome. When you don’t, you’re at the mercy of someone else’s roadmap.
Why This Blog Exists
Break the Lock-In is my personal platform to say the things the industry won’t:
- Forced upgrades aren’t innovation.
- “End of support” deadlines are a revenue tactic, not a catastrophe.
- Autonomy isn’t radical - it’s responsible leadership.
And IT decision-makers deserve better than being told what’s “mandatory.”
I’ll use this platform to share the stories that shaped me. The war stories from the enterprise trenches, the moments of humour and frustration from a life spent fixing what others abandoned, and the vision of a future where technology returns to its purpose: to serve, not to dictate.
If you’ve ever felt like the tech industry is extracting more than it’s delivering, you’ll feel at home here, so please get involved.
The Mission
Well, quite simply its to spark a global conversation about technological autonomy.
To expose the real hidden costs and risks of digital dependency.
To help people and organisations reclaim control; logically, pragmatically, and unapologetically.
This isn’t a corporate blog. This isn’t polished PR. This is personal.
This is from someone who’s been on the inside, seen the machinery, and is now pulling back the curtain.
Welcome to #Break the Lock-In.
Let’s rethink the future. One story, one truth, and one fixed system at a time