Comments on: Amazon cloud moves spook partners and customers

By: martin english

martin english — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 02:04:36 +0000

I agree; choose your partners and products based on the services you require, then use ONLY those services.

By: Eirikur Hrafnsson

Eirikur Hrafnsson — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 03:49:37 +0000

Well then demands AWS open sources the services, or choose to use an Amazon compatible but 100% renewable compute cloud -> http://greenqloud.com

By: Sinclair Schuller

Sinclair Schuller — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:26:01 +0000

Lock-in is something that doesn’t make sense in the context of APIs. APIs are not compulsory. If someone finds value in the AWS APIs, they can choose to use them. We bump into this question at Apprenda on the PaaS side of things all the time.

Technology like a PaaS can inject lots of “implicit” value into an application, which is a no lock-in model, but can also offer APIs & frameworks which will create lock-in, but an application can choose to not take advantage of that value and avoid lock-in. The AWS scenario is no different.

By: Mike Kavis

Mike Kavis — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 09:29:03 +0000

This article is silly. As Adrian said, these are API calls not a programming language that locks you in like Python on Google and Apex on Force.com. As Fabian said, you use the services that you want and can choose whether you want to be “locked in” or not by the way you architect your solutions. AWS provides you with tools for your toolbox. You build your house however you want. You can use Amazon’s tools or bring your own.

By: adrian cockcroft

adrian cockcroft — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 09:12:59 +0000

I don’t think this should “spook” anyone. Three points:

1) AWS is exposing higher level components like SWF because it needs these features to orchestrate AWS operations, and has customer demand for the features. One of the biggest AWS customers doesn’t care about lock-in because it’s the amazon.com web site, so the rest of us get access to useful features that are designed to work at huge scale.

2) Apps are not locked into using APIs from a single cloud vendor. We have built apps that run in our datacenter that use AWS features like SQS, SDB, S3 etc. to help migrate data to EC2. It would be possible to use AWS SWF to orchestrate an app running across EC2, Joyent and Rackspace. These are HTTP/REST APIs that can be called from anywhere.

3) If SWF turns out to be useful, someone will make an open source clone or cobble together equivalent functionality eventually. In the same way, it’s easy to move from SimpleDB or DynamoDB to the open source Apache Cassandra data store, which has a fairly complete superset of the features of DynamoDB. We’ve moved SDB apps to Cassandra with a few days coding effort.

The comment that you can’t do development on a laptop on a plane makes no sense to me. Only the most trivial app code could be run standalone, and developers in real life don’t spend their time coding while disconnected.

By: scott herson

scott herson — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:52:06 +0000

Step right this way into the VIP room…

Scott Herson
Joyent Cloud Hosting
Sales – Americas
herson@joyent.com
http://www.joyentcloud.com
949.861.1069

By: Ric

Ric — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 23:35:01 +0000

Got to love those monetization plans handed down from corporate that fundamentally change a service and no one stops to ask if it is a good idea.

A good example is twitters late relationship with third party folk!

Im just saying

By: Fabian Schonholz

Fabian Schonholz — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 23:12:36 +0000

It is a silly argument. So, do not use AWS full service stack. Use only what you want based on your technology strategy.