Yup. We had a pretty good (20%) discount if you paid for a year up front that customers often used, so it wasn't slow to save up the cash, but it serialized a lot of processes that could have been parallelized. Testing one server well takes a few days. Testing 100 servers well takes a few days.

I mean, there certainly was also a time aspect that was independent of that serialization, but a lot of that was also saving money. I mean, I personally argue that buying servers from parts is less time than negotiating a good deal on an assembled server, but we certainly could have gotten tested servers out faster if we were willing to shovel more money at someone. Maybe even if we still serialized the purchase.