If dishwashers were invented today they would be rented out to homes and businesses with DRM to lock you into buying approved detergent and tableware. Times change, and more exploitative arrangements are normalized. This ratchet is primed to go in one direction, and only moves the other way in fits and starts borne of great effort.
I don't think OP's goal was to get this done in the most efficient way possible, but rather to solve a problem using the tools that they were already familiar with and have access to.
Agreed. Most providers appear to simply slap on the "Cloud" sticker to whatever VPS solution they were providing earlier with absolutely no change in features. These are the features that I believe should be present in any provider that claim themselves to be cloud providers:
1. Ability to scale up or down instances with change in demand.
2. Absolutely zero machine agnostic. I really should be bothered whether I am running a linux/windows/lego machine.
3. Auto configuration and notification - Leave little configuration to me so that I can concentrate more on the stuff I like. But, please do notify me in case the whole system burns down.
4. Easily available APIs that are globally used by all - a user account management, cache management, web UI framework etc.
If you see, there are only a few couple of sites (Google App Engine, Heroku et al.) that satisfy these conditions. Rest all are VPS wolfs on Cloud sheep suits.
Zoho is an awesome company and I have written many blog posts among them. But this sort of marketing is pathetic and doesn't suit any reputable company. It's simply childish. Stop it zoho. Nobody likes a cry baby.
