Comments on: What happens when you need to switch cloud providers?

The cloud is not hot-swappable. You will have your hands full if you want change providers.

[qnet]

Java-in-the-cloud is limiting as heck -- who wants to get pinned into one language choice?! (Not that it's as portable as it promises, either.)

VMware, Citrix XenServer, and (soon) other virtualization providers are in the process of delivering support for a portable container format called OVF (Open Virtual Machine Format), a DMTF standard those companies and others submittedi OVF will enable full VM portability.

[lmasanti]

quote:
"There is a very large risk of Cloud lock-in, but I'm not sure that it matters as long as you have a way to get off of a specific provider."

The "risk" is always "money and time": if you are in the cloud, possible it is because it is cheaper than having your hard/host/soft... money/time that you have to put in case you run your own solution.

Basic business thinking.

[pencoyd]

Read this post from David Young of Joyent, which provides cloud computing.

http://www.joyeur.com/2008/05/08/cloud-nine-specification-for-a-cloud-computer-a-call-to-action

A more detailed analysis of what a cloud service is (or should be), which is a step towards interoperability.

[drjamesblake]

I work for a cloud services provider and we enshrine the fact that the data always belongs to the customer in one of our SLAs. If the customer wishes to move from our service, we supply their data back to them in a data format or media of their choice. We have to do this because the question of who owns the data and how they can get it off our platform at a later date almost always comes up during the sales cycle.