Happy to talk more about “openness” any time.

Thanks for your comment. I'm afraid I have to disagree. There may be some folks who want pink cars, but almost clearly a minority. If they were big enough they would constitute a real 'market force' and car manufacturers would produce pink cars. More importantly, cars and the cloud couldn't be further apart so your analogy is a bit off-base.

The cost to a car manufacturer to provide, ship, distribute, and stock cars with infrequently requested colors for small groups is prohibitive. The Internet and Internet-related services like the cloud, by their nature allow for smaller markets (in aggregate) to be worth servicing once a cost-benefit analysis is done. This is the whole 'long tail' in action. In effect, there can be a large 'market force' because of the reach available to Internet services.

In terms of choice, the main thrust of this article is that customers will (and already do) demand choice. GoGrid already sees a number of customers move from other cloud providers who don't provide them with the kinds of choices they want and vice versa. The 'market' usually votes with it's feet.

My assertion is that once a segment of the cloud computing market adopts 'open', 'open enough', or 'de facto' standards customers will begin to move to those segments away from the more closed segments. Just like they have with social media sites, news, and related. People want cheap, easy, and accessible.

–Randy