Free? and Flawed?

There is an outfit called Joyent that is offering free python cloud computing for developers. All they ask is — “… Joyent only asks that you provide Joyent unlimited access to your customer information and clickstream data. …”. Sounds like a great deal for the developer doesn’t it? We don’t think so –

• To enter this ‘garden’ you have to have 25k unique clicks a month. Well ok, but supporting those clicks have to come from somewhere don’t they — like the app is running on some existing server farm somewhere. Well if that investment has already been made then scaling is the factor to be considered.
• What does Joyent intend to do with the data? Do not Dear Developer think that you are immune from prosecution for the acts of another. If Joyent does something nefarious with the data collected you may still be sued as the portal agent that some customer data was scarfed from. The ‘I was not aware’ defense is so weak as to be indefensible.
• How portable is that data set once you want to exit? I have seen way too many startups die because the switch costs of going to the platform they needed to be on bankrupted them. Define your exit strategy before you sign up for any SaaS compute services.

If you are a business manager looking to make a move to Saas bring your trusted IT guy with you. Make sure they provide you ranking on the level of difficulty of a switch out of services to another provider. As an example. Right now I would rank the switch costs of EC2/S3 platform lower than the BigTable engine in GAE. Know how to get out before you try to get in with Saas. Your business depends on it. And for Gods Sake, know what may be done with any data so hosted.

Linky.