(THREAD) 1/ Cloud makes tech MORE accessible to skeevy orgs. Not less. Cloud has democratized B2B tech transactions. For most services anyone can just sign up with a credit card on a click-thru. That means that vendors do not actively select a large number of their customers.

2/ In the past, hardware and software vendors, telcos, etc. would look at a prospect and say, "They're skeevy. Let's not try to sell to them." Maybe a sales exec would even be told "You won't get a commission if you sell to them."

3/ When "primary" tech vendors would refuse to deal with a skeevy customer they'd go down the VAR stack until they could find a reseller willing to deal with them (though if they were buying a service, they'd still ultimately be policed by the upstream provider).

4/ Now, skeevy customers can at least sign up for cloud services, no gate applied. But the usual "we kinda don't want to do business with you" still applies when they try to get an EA, raise baseline service limits, change payment terms (invoicing, ACH, longer grace), etc.

5/ Skeevy customers working with tech vendors will still get everything they paid for (including solid customer and technical support / tech account mgmt if that's the norm for the vendor). And an individual salesperson may push to expand relationship if they get quota for it.

6/ But it tends to stop there, especially with service providers, who may feel like they need to be able to unwind the relationship at any time.

7/ If you're skeevy, the real risks for you are your vendor relationships -- whether contractual or more personal. You're always on somewhat dangerous ground for "do we want to gently (or not so gently) fire these guys as a customer".

8/ As the world moves towards software *subscriptions* rather than perpetual licenses, this makes a lot of commercial software risky for skeevy customers. Because a vendor can choose not to renew a subscription license in the future. And they don't have to give you a reason.

9/ So it's really not just about the cloud. If you're skeevy, you need to DIY for just about everything. You can buy hardware and use OSS (assuming that the open-source license doesn't say that your use is prohibited). Strive for portability. You'll need it. /fin

In case you aren't aware of the "ethical" OSS licenses: https://perens.com/2019/10/12/invasion-of-the-ethical-licenses/

Also: If you're skeevy, your hardware and software vendors may be under no obligation to renew support contracts, etc. All but the most basic commodity hardware tends to require a support/maintenance contract. We're now in a services-oriented world, courtesy of complexity.