[jpalomaki]

I believe reasonably priced dedicated servers (from companies like OVH, Hetzner) will be big thing in future. Cloud based virtual machines are useful for many tasks, but it is also pretty nice to get 256GB/6 core/4TB machine for 140€ per month.

[catdog]

I agree, using dedicated hardware is certainly nice and has some advantages over VMs. It's not only a big thing in the future but also at present, companies like OVH or Hetzner seem to do well despite the rising of the "Cloud".

You exactly know what you get performance wise, e.g. no bad influence from some random neighboring VM. Security is also a concern with virtualization, isolation between VMs turned out to be not that perfect as desired. You can also roll your own virtualization exactly tailored to your needs. "Cloud" VMs also tend to be rather expensive if you need them continuously, you pay for the flexibility they provide.

[ju-st]

It should be a big thing, but their marketing/hype machine is seriously lacking. As a first step, building a data center presence in SV/west coast would help.

[kyledrake]

Their ability to do automated recurring billing, amazingly, is also lacking. I really wish they would fix that already. It's kindof a deal breaker for most people.

[slau]

How so? I've had servers with OVH and Online.net for about 10 years, and only had to look at the billing forms when I moved countries.

[niij]

I had an even more annoying issue with their billing system.

I had 5 VPSs and whenever it was time for renewal, one of the VPSs would turn off ~5 days prematurely (before the renewal date). I contacted support multiple times about the error in their billing system until I got too frustrated and migrated last month.