[atonse]

We've been running mostly VMs all this time on our app (Windows, SQL Server, Linux w/ Rails), but have been using more and more ACTUAL AWS services (SQS, DynamoDB, Redshift).

I can maybe see where those latter amazon specific services are a lock-in. But I still don't see it that way, really. They aren't a lock-in from the perspective of the code if you put everything behind service interfaces with different implementations. The big guys like Azure and Google Compute all have similar services for DB as a service, blob storage, VMs, etc.

But the act of migrating to something like Azure is just generally a lot of work in ensuring 0 downtime and a smooth transition. That's hard no matter what technologies we use.

And we've talked about it. But just the act of moving is, in my opinion, a multi-week migration process with load tests etc.

And the cost savings would have to outweigh the amount of engineering costs of moving.

All this to say, the real lock-in is lack of dissatisfaction in our situation. "Amazon works well enough for us."