I don't hear enough people talking about vendor lock-in with AWS, or any other cloud provider for that matter. Too many of us are building our company's infrastructure on AWS with little regard for the cost of switching.<p>I try to stick with Amazon's IaaS offerings, only employing PaaS products when they offer considerable advantages over anything I could roll economically on bare infrastructure.<p>Ask yourself, "in terms of time or money, what would it cost me if this cloud product were discontinued without notice?"<p>AWS might lose a patent battle, get shut down by the government, or get crippled by hackers or a long-term service interruption. If that happened, how long would you be down while you struggle to get up and running at another provider? What if Amazon raises their prices to the point where you want to change cloud providers? Would the cost of switching be prohibitive?