I'm tired of hearing about the "death" of IaaS. This guy is paranoid. The reason that "PaaS" platforms are multiplying is that they are easy to put together. By deliberately restricting what the customer can do, you can offer cheaper and higher-performing services.

Vendor lock-in is a nice plus for the vendor, but that alone wouldn't drive these product offerings.

The truth is that we haven't worked out the kinks in infrastructure as a service. Only trivial designs can be implemented in today's public clouds. Judging from vCloud Service Director (or whatever Redwood is called this week), that's not likely to change in the immediate future.

Get back to me when "IaaS" products permit the kind of extensive network design customization that your managed service colo host will typically support. If those types of products are supplanted by vendors pushing PaaS, then I'll start to worry.