I don't think they're like insurance companies at all. Cloud companies don't generate a big investable float based on a very low initial cost of the service provisioning. Quite the opposite, cloud companies have substantial pre-existing costs related to being able to provide the cloud services to each customer (including being able to do it at immense scale as necessary). That cost remains considerable and on-going at all times during the service providing period generally speaking. For insurance companies, the cost for a given policy is extremely low until a claim arrives.
To be like insurance companies, this is how their cloud business would have to work: you pay them $20,000 over ten years while receiving absolutely nothing tangible in return, until one day, ten years in, you need to utilize $25,000 in cloud services in a short burst. Then afterward, your bill goes up significantly, while as an industry they reduce what you get for that.
Beside that, there are exceptionally few things the little guy stands a chance at when competing head-on with a giant. The giant benefits from bargaining power at scale that is usually rather dramatic on most everything.
Eg Diapers.com was a well funded, well run ecommerce start-up. Amazon was going to destroy their business through scale leverage - applying plausibly anti-competitive below-cost tactics on core products like diapers - to put them under if they didn't agree to be acquired (Amazon had already begun applying that tactic in the lead-up to the acquisition, scaring the hell out of Diapers.com).
To be like insurance companies, this is how their cloud business would have to work: you pay them $20,000 over ten years while receiving absolutely nothing tangible in return, until one day, ten years in, you need to utilize $25,000 in cloud services in a short burst. Then afterward, your bill goes up significantly, while as an industry they reduce what you get for that.
Beside that, there are exceptionally few things the little guy stands a chance at when competing head-on with a giant. The giant benefits from bargaining power at scale that is usually rather dramatic on most everything.
Eg Diapers.com was a well funded, well run ecommerce start-up. Amazon was going to destroy their business through scale leverage - applying plausibly anti-competitive below-cost tactics on core products like diapers - to put them under if they didn't agree to be acquired (Amazon had already begun applying that tactic in the lead-up to the acquisition, scaring the hell out of Diapers.com).