I have been painstakingly laying the ground work for segmenting network into data center management plane, and future overlay networks for internal applications and dmz / public services.
It would have been easy to burn the place down and start over…
contract “options” are indeed normal. You could also lump in government contracts into the category your thinking about. I’ve never heard of a scenario where the vendor broke contract by not honoring the options. I also have never dealt with a vendor getting bought out and then not honoring existing contracts. Super fun to watch the corporate drama. I personally don’t care for the private equity style business that seems to be an even bigger problem than the investor first/profit centric model that I thought was the worst thing.