Freetards? Do you make money from an OS, compiler or similar infrastructure? If not, then your employer would in my opinion be making a mistake to send $$$ to a vendor of same unless they're in a very special niche.

One of the only enduring lessons from IT history is that there's always going to come a time to move on from some technology or vendor. And IBM isn't doing wrong by trying to capture some cash but it's very late in this game and its a losing battle.

I'm guessing that it's going to be the 'legacy' cloud vendor's time soon. The markup is way out of whack.