TracyIsland

Not to derail this, but I agree with your sentiments @ufshane.  IPS must be aware of the impact to their self hosting clients and the viability/affordability aspect will become the litmus test for their chosen approach, and client attrition will be the proof of it.  The math is the math when it comes to cost and if clients are priced out, suddenly IPS becomes non-competitive compared to other products.  To effectively force cloud hosting pigeonholes clients who may have needs beyond what IPS offers in cloud hosting.  I'd imagine they have awareness around that, otherwise they'd be sabotaging their own business, which is why I can't get my head around this assumed path of eliminating self hosting.  Just seems like a terrible business decision, but IPS has access to data I don't (in terms of their customer base, profit margins, support overhead of self hosting vs ROI on self hosting support within the product, etc).  In that regard, if they somehow identify an opportunity whereas they'd make more money from cloud hosting by eliminating self hosting, then that's simply a strategic business decision on their part that improves their bottom line.  But they also can't be penny wise and dollar foolish, having MORE of IPS out there (ala self hosting) is free advertising and exposure for them to acquire more clients.  A similar analogy is Amazon eating shipping costs for loss on smaller products to gain in the bigger business of getting eyes on higher priced items and selling those too.  Even if the math shows you're losing money in one area, that loss may be gaining you more in another facet of your business.  Exposing that between cloud vs self hosting is a difficult connection for them, but again the "common sense" (opinion) side of me believes simply ending self hosting would be a terrible decision and just push your existing self hosting clients to your competition and then propagate your competitions products to the forefront of the market's visibility.  Guess only time will tell, but just as IPS offers conversion services, so do their competitors and their competitors will see the trend and ensure they offer conversion paths (even for those clients who have a lot of customization).