I have no idea what you mean with that Ford comment. My best guess is that you think consumers are too stupid to consider anything but a Ford?

I did negotiate server/colo/cloud prices, but I spent person-months of effort deconstructing what the right price was. I've never done that for a car.

I once interviewed for a CTO job at a major storage vendor, and in the discussion they said that most of their major customers successfully reverse-engineered prices, and that kept their margins down. I've heard that (over beers) from some server resellers, too.