One of the major issues facing cloud service providers is the expense of building out infrastructure without knowing how or when revenues will follow. As a result, cloud providers are reevaluating their approach to hardware and software investments and engaging with technology and networking vendors to develop creative pricing models that are aligned with cloud business principles and engineered to reduce risks.
In a perfect world, cloud service providers would pay for infrastructure only after a customer has made a purchase – in order to maintain a tight correlation between revenues and expenses. In the real world, however, implementing this type of model is easier said than done. This was especially true during the ‘iron’ age, when hardware and software were highly coupled and there were very few alternatives to big vendors that focused on selling high-dollar, high-performance networking gear.