[lsc]

So, uh, what was the thought process when choosing a PAAS provider? I mean, step back for a moment, and ignore the specifics of Heroku; they are a PAAS provider with no completely compatible competitors, is that not so?

Whenever I choose service providers (or choose to outsource services) my first thought is "what happens if I have to switch away from them?" Even if you think my first rule of business is too cynical, everyone has problems, and if you are locked into a provider while they are having problems, well, you have a problem.

I mean, PAAS seems like a great idea for people who want to write apps but not be sysadmins. But personally? I don't understand why anyone would sign up with a PAAS provider that was unique. I mean, if you have to re-write your app to change providers, you are locked in, in a terrifying way.

[aneth4]

That's certainly a consideration, but every PAAS is "unique" by definition. Something like Google Apps has more lock-in than others. Some like Heroku are attractive because they have features not available elsewhere that would take a lot of resources to reproduce.

We chose heroku and Rails for the reasons you suggest, and even tried to avoid major tie-ins to the platform. That doesn't mean it's trivial to move to another platform.

[okalex]

That's not entirely true. Cloud Foundry (the software) is an open-source platform that allows for compatibility across providers. You can see a list of compatible providers here, in addition to cloudfoundry.com: http://www.cloudfoundry.com/partners

Full disclosure: I work for AppFog, one of the providers listed.

[lsc]

> That's certainly a consideration, but every PAAS is "unique" by definition.

I don't see how this is true.

There is nothing about PaaS that says there can't be compatible competitors. Hell, there have been PHP shared hosting platforms that were very nearly identical between providers for a decade before anyone started saying PaaS, and really, the "Innovation" that made shared hosting PaaS lies in per-usage billing.