The part I don't understand is the combination of these statements you posted today:
> there's a market price for this stuff and we don't have pricing power.
> We couldn't raise prices for VMs even if we wanted to
> the profitability path for us is reasonably simple: have good unit margins
How do these square up? How can you reliably maintain good margins if your competitors set your prices? And your competitors have the scale to, for instance, design and manufacture their own hardware rather than buying off-the-shelf chips.
I would think the key would be not to accept being a commodity whose prices can be directly compared with other hosters.
> there's a market price for this stuff and we don't have pricing power.
> We couldn't raise prices for VMs even if we wanted to
> the profitability path for us is reasonably simple: have good unit margins
How do these square up? How can you reliably maintain good margins if your competitors set your prices? And your competitors have the scale to, for instance, design and manufacture their own hardware rather than buying off-the-shelf chips.
I would think the key would be not to accept being a commodity whose prices can be directly compared with other hosters.