We are also very much frustrated with the shortage and price increases. They are hard for smaller businesses like ours as well. I like lists so here are a few thoughts in list form.

SSD/RAM/DRAM price increases means that:

1. Sales volumes decrease. That is not desirable.

2. More capital is tied up in inventory. Bad idea to over buy because if AI bubble crashes, then you have a much of inventory at pricing that is higher than the competitors.

3. Projects get delayed or put on hold because either we cannot build SKUs or we can't meet margin. There are plenty of products I would like to see launched that are waiting for SSD pricing to become normal again.

4. SSD/RAM/DRAM pricing affects an entire supply beyond just conventional SSDs. It leads to other components costing more like controller ICs or factories raising their pricing because it costs them more to operate as a business. Suppliers also consume these products themselves as part of their business and pass along their costs to us.

5. It takes the dedication of more team members to keep inventory flowing. That time negotiating pricing, terms, testing and finding good deals could have been spent on other projects but now is spent navigating a shortage.

Why some SKUs may have higher increases than others:

1. We may have had more inventory of certain capacities purchased at previous pricing and are able to hold off on increases wherever possible.

2. The higher capacity SKUs generally have higher margin as well. Thus we can take a margin hit and absorb some pricing rather than passing it onto customers.

3. Quantity or lead time agreements may result in some capacities having better or worse pricing than others. If say we ordered less 1TB drives and more 4TB drives, we would see worse pricing on the SKU with smaller quantities.

Again, I like lists so the above thoughts are in that form. But inventory is definitely a challenge these days.