The last photo in the article shows a slide that states: The 4 commandments of trusted internet services: 1. A service you use must be available from many pro

The last photo in the article shows a slide that states: The 4 commandments of trusted internet services: 1. A service you use must be available from many providers 2. It must be possible to move your data from one to the other 3. The service must also be available as software 4. The software must be available as open source I like this criteria - and it's not new. Think of a popular online app that has met these conditions for over a decade: WordPress. If the criteria above were more popular it might make SaaS lock-in less attractive too. Consider the following scenario: Hosting companies agree on a standard installation API for server web apps. This lets developers create server web apps that can be installed on any hosting provider that supports that installation API. A simple one-click process. Businesses and indivduals can shop around to find a suitable hosting plan that will run the app. Like WordPress, there will be cheap-and-cheerful hosting plans at one end of the scale and at the other end are managed services with SLAs (Service Level Agreements) and premium support. The open, standard installation API enables data to be transferred from one hosting provider to another allowing easy data transfer from one hosting provider to another. (Or at least an easy way to download your data). Think of the above as the 'WordPress' model and imgaine if it was widely available to all cloud apps. It would unlock countless opportunities for developers. It would also mean management of servers is offloaded to hosting companies - while developers can simply concentrate on building their apps. Alas, it will probably never happen.