It's easy to game. Source: was a sales engineer for ISPs and Data Centers. So assume you're doing a 3-year or 5-year TCO -- you build in credits, discounts, a

It's easy to game. Source: was a sales engineer for ISPs and Data Centers. So assume you're doing a 3-year or 5-year TCO -- you build in credits, discounts, and bundled options. Execs are looking for a 3-year apples-to-apples spend, and you make your TCO look fucking amazing. They see the low price and decent technical options and they bite. 3 years later those credits vanish and they're paying full OpEx costs. And after 3 years they're now invested -- stuck -- in their space/circuit/whatever. You can start raising the price or negotiating new contracts. Same thing with the cloud, for that matter. Cut a glorious bulk deal with Microsoft for Azure space, and then after you've moved everything to MS they can start nickle and diming you -- cuz the cost of moving that load to AWS or GCP isn't cheap, and you're not going out and buying more hardware and going back to CoLo are you?