There&#x27;s always this tension, its really interesting.<p>I think the open ecosystem approach will work well for apps&#x2F;systems that are more established and have a predictable and sustainable user base and related revenue stream to maintain the system.<p>But for new ideas, early stage startups, the open eco-system approach will be a lot more work than using the high-level services providers like amazon are developing ...basically a no-stack approach can help one quickly find some product &#x2F; market fit. Once some level of baseline level of utilization is understood then switching to a more difficult, but less-locked in approach would be smart.<p>all that said, there&#x27;s probably a middle ground here too (but arguably not) -- where one deploy&#x27;s using docker containers, private registry &amp; image repo, s3 for static immutable storage and some open database like PostgreSQL on RDS. All that could be layered on top of AWS and other providers  -- but it will still be a PITA to move the whole thing.<p>BTW -- take a look at the elasticbox product -- they really have an interesting approach to cloud that sort of obviates the lock-in issue by allowing one to build apps across clouds from the start using their &quot;boxes&quot; metaphor.