The "march up the value chain" isn't about lock-in. It's about the fact there are a lot of business providing services between AWS and other services running on

The "march up the value chain" isn't about lock-in. It's about the fact there are a lot of business providing services between AWS and other services running on AWS (eg, by providing pre-packaged AMIs containing ready-to-run MySQL databases, and automatic management thereof) This is because in the early days of AWS, it offered you lots of moving parts to tweak, but you had to learn a lot to make best use of it. There was quite a lot of room in the market for paying people to take away some of the headaches in managing AWS yourself. This is becoming less & less true as Amazon provide more services - if you're still in that space, then you ought to be looking worried.