In the early days of cloud providers, their services were both easy-to-use and cost-effective for many growing companies. Now, cloud providers offer a giant ha

In the early days of cloud providers, their services were both easy-to-use and cost-effective for many growing companies. Now, cloud providers offer a giant hairball of specialized services, built on top of other specialized services, built on top of yet other specialized services... such that no single person can comprehend all of them, let alone manage them cost-effectively. Moreover, as all these intertwined services become deeply entrenched in IT infrastructure, migrating away from them becomes incredibly disruptive. The financial incentives of cloud providers are not aligned with those of customers. The more a customer is sucked and trapped inside those giant hairballs, the better for the cloud providers. To paraphrase the Dark Knight, cloud providers may have been the heroes at first, but they have lived long enough to become the villains.