Huh? Shared server infrastructure? That's really what this sounds like. Welcome to web hosting in 1999 guys. Most of the point of AWS was that you have your own dedicated resources. Sure, this is a scaling solution, but revolutionary?
Ain't a 'server' boss. They're running a segment of code. When someone hits your PHP page on an oversubscribed DreamHost box with 4000 other sites contending for resources, it's pretty much the same thing. Here we're getting some dedicated CPU/Mem, but it ain't a 'server.' Where's the dedicated disk and ability to install/run whatever I want? Nope, just a lil segment of JS running on a shared resource and billed in 100ms increments.
And yet, they don't. Compare that to Oracle. Plus, when Amazon makes a new cloud architecture that gets popular, others copy it. OpenStack will have this if need be in a year or two and then you can port to OS in 5 years when the rent goes up.
Oh, and FWIW, when has AWS raised a price? My servers have gotten cheaper every year I've had them with AWS (3).
Regarding OpenStack and something similar, there is the underlying workflow service (not quite the same I know) called Mistral. A project called StackStorm that is related but adds event handling and a rule engine launched a couple weeks ago.
To be fair, you have to pay per unit for these services, so as long as people are using them, Amazon is making money. Putting a service out to pasture in maintenance mode probably wouldn't cost that much.
Maintenance on all of their services is non-trivial in terms of people at least. However if they are used internally, directly or indirectly then they're already paying for it.
