That's a fair point. > it outcompetes is based on the network of linked self serve services in the ecosystem You have to differentiate between business concer

That's a fair point. > it outcompetes is based on the network of linked self serve services in the ecosystem You have to differentiate between business concerns. First, the concern of those who are willing to buy an IP license because they think the product is useful to them (akin to buying a Windows license key). ES doesn't make any revenue here. They don't sell IP licenses. That's a direct consequence of putting an open source license on your product. Anyone can just get a copy of the code and spin up their own instance, no strings attached. Second, the market of those who are looking towards assistance in using the product (consultancy, support, servicing, hosting,...). You can spin up your own instance and do all the work yourself independently. But for organizations, operating software is an expense: often it's cheaper to outsource those costs towards specialists... such as ES offering consultancy services. The product license and the type of support you want/need are different business concerns. You can choose to an open source product and host everything yourself, you can choose a closed source product and host it yourself, or you can outsource hosting and support to a partner like ES or AWS. > We spend a ton of money on Amazon in general, and I would not tout thier consultancy as being anything but ok if not underwhelming. Don't get me wrong here... But the moment you open up your wallet for AWS, you've already contributed to AWS' market position against ES. Sure, your experience with AWS might be underwhelming, and that's totally valid. But that doesn't matter if you still go ahead and choose to pay for their services. A market position isn't tied to the quality of service. It's tied to how much potential customers a business can sweep up and convert into hard revenue. The quality of the service is tangential to that. You can create an absolutely shoddy user experience, and still dominate a market if you happen to position yourself at the right time, with the right product to the right people.