[lsc]

it is in the best interest of larger, more established players to lock you in by using proprietary, patent protected, and/or complex APIs. Smaller players, on the other hand, want to grow, often by undercutting the larger players on cost (the entire market here is priced massively above the costs I see, so just about anyone with a few servers can come in and be 1/2 to 1/4th market price.) In that case, the smaller players desperately want it to be easy to move from one provider to another.

The current situation is that only complex APIs exist.

The problem is that the smaller players often don't have the resources to deal with a more complex API.

I think what we need is a 'simplest thing that could possibly work' API that is easy for good SysAdmins (who may not be good programmers) to integrate into their own system.

But then, I haven't really played much with Eucalyptus. maybe I am wrong about it being too complex. I should throw up a server with Eucalyptus and see what happens.