There's a substantial difference between a service and an installed product.
PostgreSQL 9.3 is installed on your database server, the source is available, and it isn't going anywhere.
If Oracle discontinued their database platform tomorrow (unlikely!), your licensed copy will remain valid for a long time up until you swap it out for another closely compatible database.
If Parse closes their doors or exits tomorrow, that's it.
Compare to AWS: If Amazon discontinues EC2, other virtual hosting services exist. If they discontinue Beanstalk, then at least you were coding to a commmon servlet API. If they discontinue S3, there are some compatible competitors, but hopefully you wrote your data layer to be S3-agnostic.
I think non-standardized AWS services are more risky. More standardized fare -- EC2, Beanstalk, etc -- less risky. Basing your entire code base on pervasive use of Parse -- very risky.
1) There is very little chance of them closing their doors in the near future as they raised a large series A and have great growth.
2) Having personally talked with Tikhon on the subject and it's clear that they plan to make this a stable platform for the longhaul. I would not hesitate to build a project on top of Parse they are a great group and would not leave their users hanging.
3) If you're still hesitant keep in mind you can still keep mission critical stuff on your own Servers/APIs and use Parse for Push Notifications/Location etc.. There is nothing locking you into what parts of the Parse SDK you use.
> 1) There is very little chance of them closing their doors in the near future as they raised a large series A and have great growth.
Until/unless they get purchased. As you said, it was a large series A.
> 2) Having personally talked with Tikhon on the subject and it's clear that they plan to make this a stable platform for the longhaul. I would not hesitate to build a project on top of Parse they are a great group and would not leave their users hanging.
If they're bought, it won't be their decision.
> 3) If you're still hesitant keep in mind you can still keep mission critical stuff on your own Servers/APIs and use Parse for Push Notifications/Location etc.. There is nothing locking you into what parts of the Parse SDK you use.
Push, etc, is the easy stuff.
> 4) You can always export your data.
It's the continued functioning of the code that I'm worried about, not the data.
PostgreSQL 9.3 is installed on your database server, the source is available, and it isn't going anywhere.
If Oracle discontinued their database platform tomorrow (unlikely!), your licensed copy will remain valid for a long time up until you swap it out for another closely compatible database.
If Parse closes their doors or exits tomorrow, that's it.
Compare to AWS: If Amazon discontinues EC2, other virtual hosting services exist. If they discontinue Beanstalk, then at least you were coding to a commmon servlet API. If they discontinue S3, there are some compatible competitors, but hopefully you wrote your data layer to be S3-agnostic.
I think non-standardized AWS services are more risky. More standardized fare -- EC2, Beanstalk, etc -- less risky. Basing your entire code base on pervasive use of Parse -- very risky.