A few days ago, many of us posted about Google App Engine. Most of us made some sort of comparison between GAE and AWS (Amazon Web Services.) I remarked that I didn’t understand why GAE seemed to arouse much more concern about lockin than did AWS.
Dion Hinchcliffe compares the two “Plafform as a Service” offerings, concluding that:
The decision for many startups will be an easy one; the benefits of using these platforms for their new products are compelling across the board despite minor concerns about platform lock-in even though the models used by both companies are actually surprisingly lock-in free.
So maybe the perception that GAE poses significantly greater lockin risk than does AWS is a perception about the difference between Google and Amazon, rather than a reflection of technical differences between the two platform as a service offerings. It’s a feeling that one should be wary about being locked in by the “don’t be evil” company.
Ha, ha. Lock-in is such a nasty caveat, Andrew! All part of the world domination thing and hidden minutely in the details. It will actually be better for other big cloud players to emerge which makes it all more interesting for devs and business who then would have choices (but still no guarantee against traps).
Do check out some small players like Morph eXchange and how they do their PaaS thing, too.
Best.
alain