> desire among customers for a true cloud-like on-prem experience
> it seems likely that more will consider buying machines instead of always renting them
They know companies are insistent on making the mistake of trying to build and run their own platforms, so they're becoming the company that you can throw your money at if you're not willing to pay for IBM/Oracle/etc private cloud.
Old folks remember the revolution in distributed computing came from commodities. The idea was to get a lot of the cheapest resources you could and loosely tie them together. This was fast, cheap and effective, because everything was disposable, flexible, open. Even if you hired a dozen engineers, you saved 3 mil a year on enterprise hardware and software licenses.
What these folks are betting on is that businesses want to "buy a cloud" cheaper than they'd get it from a traditional cloud vendor. But to get cheap hardware and software, you need to strip it down to bare essentials, use the cheapest, crappiest parts, literally throwing away parts rather than fix them. Purpose-built hardware and software is the opposite, and of course ignores the management costs (unless that's going to be part of the payment strategy?).
> desire among customers for a true cloud-like on-prem experience
> it seems likely that more will consider buying machines instead of always renting them
They know companies are insistent on making the mistake of trying to build and run their own platforms, so they're becoming the company that you can throw your money at if you're not willing to pay for IBM/Oracle/etc private cloud.
Old folks remember the revolution in distributed computing came from commodities. The idea was to get a lot of the cheapest resources you could and loosely tie them together. This was fast, cheap and effective, because everything was disposable, flexible, open. Even if you hired a dozen engineers, you saved 3 mil a year on enterprise hardware and software licenses.
What these folks are betting on is that businesses want to "buy a cloud" cheaper than they'd get it from a traditional cloud vendor. But to get cheap hardware and software, you need to strip it down to bare essentials, use the cheapest, crappiest parts, literally throwing away parts rather than fix them. Purpose-built hardware and software is the opposite, and of course ignores the management costs (unless that's going to be part of the payment strategy?).