Perry, all good points- but possibly backward-looking? If MS and Google are correct that Cloud/SaaS is to become the accepted norm, customers won't get the opportunity to care what technology is used behind the scenes. If you Wikipedia "cloud computing" you'll see that this point is highlighted.

My recent experience in California: extremely large corporate customers purchased a SaaS deal. They cared about whether their data was leaving the country; they're totally disinterested in the technology used in the magic box that actually does the work.

IMHO: bring on the great big backend-agnostic new world. IMHO tech has become far too inclined to navel-gaze, worrying about technical minutiae rather than "value" and "advantage" and other stuff that matters to customers expected to write a check.