[vvanders]

A good chunk of my time was in SoC eval so if the vendor was being complacent they didn't get the bid. You should always be running multiple solutions so you don't get locked in with a certain vendor(and also a really good reason to keep any tech stack you have highly portable).

Even then though there's ways to approach it that don't disclose. You can set KPIs that you expect to hit and talk through how they plan too approach it from their side. If something is known in the public you can reference it although I generally prefer not to.

Depending on what part of the industry you're in some vendors prefer not to patent and keep approaches internal so discussion of certain aspects can be pretty sensitive.