Microsoft and Google are supporting Apache Ossie, an open specification that lets enterprises move semantic models between analytics platforms without rebuilding them. The backing from major vendors makes portability more likely, but governance gaps and the spec's early stage mean enterprises still face real constraints in switching platforms.

• Microsoft is building two-way converters between Power BI and Ossie, and pushing for DAX language support, so calculation logic moves with models across platforms instead of needing recreation.
• Governance features like row-level security and access policies aren't included in the current spec, forcing enterprises to reconfigure these on each platform even with portable models.
• Ossie uses a hub-and-spoke model where the spec acts as a common format and individual vendors provide converters, reducing engineering overhead compared to point-to-point translations.
• The specification is still in development (version 0.2), lacks capabilities large enterprises need like cross-model references, and won't eliminate vendor lock-in—just shift it to platform-specific execution behavior.