[sonnyblarney]

I don't think this is like gambling.

There is a certain amount of clarity or volatility in a system. Volatility will entail cost that will effectively be passed onto the buyer one way or another.

Google can be smart about it and try to do some predictions, but ultimately, the customer should in many cases know much more about what their usage patterns will be. This information reduces volatility and therefore cost ... passed on to the buyer.

If you say "I want to rent 10 cars for a month" vs. "I want the ability to rent from 2 to 20 cars for a month, not sure about what" - what is the intrinsic cost going to be for the provider? Even with demand smoothing over a large client base ... the increased volatility is cost.

I don't think this is related to gambling.

In many ways this is really similar to financial planning and I think the language of this article will make way more sense to financial types than technical types. I might even go so far as saying this is really a problem for financial ops, and not devops.

[user5994461]

It's gambling, the customer loses money when he bets on the wrong instances.

[sonnyblarney]

By that definition, all of business is gambling.

[yladiz]

What is your definition of gambling?