The idea of one general unit of measure to rule them all does not work well for a cloud based SAAS platform. Note, this idea is specifically focused on ODC. 

Looking at one of the most popular ideas submitted https://www.outsystems.com/ideas/14656/charging-1-ao-for-static-entity-is-not-worth-it/ it's clearly evident that using AOs as a measurement does not align with customer expectations. Static entities are one great example but it doesn't end there. 

The frustration with this pricing model likely stems from 2 things:

• The service/convenience (remembering the basis is SAAS) is not worth the actual cost (AO)
• The service cost does not make sense given the infrastructure/software required for OutSystems to provide it. e.g. what it costs OutSystems to provide this is significantly less than what they are charging customers (large margins).

With that out of the way, the actual idea would be to abandon the AO cost model and adopt one that is more granular and tied closer with what we see from the SAAS cloud provider market. 

As an example, if I want to expose a REST API on AWS, I don't pay per endpoint because that makes no sense. Could AWS charge that way? Sure. The reason they don't and the same reason other cloud providers don't is because it doesn't scale because an endpoint <> infrastructure cost. 

To list things that don't seem to scale with AO pricing:

• AO per screen
• Static Entities
• Entities
• Charging per API method whether its creation vs consumption
• Custom defined events

I get that the AO unit of measure is simple and changing it means buying in to more complexity from the OutSystems perspective. The overarching need to buy in to the complexity though IMO is that it steers customers away from using the platform as intended and as a result pushes that complexity burden down to the customers. That seems to be very contrary to the mantra of what OutSystems represents with being a low code platform. 

I feel its important to state that this has nothing to do with OutSystems right to make a profit or what that profit is. It should wholly be expected that OutSystems has a profitable margin on any service they offer as long as customers are willing to pay for it. The goal is simply to:

1. Encourage customers to adopt OutSystems services broadly by avoiding prohibitive pricing structures
2. Increase pricing transparency and as a result improving the ability to forecast/budget scaling cost
3. Adopt a pricing model that customers can more easily reason about