there is one thing one often forgets: FM is multi-user, but by far not multi-developer.. If You develop by two or more colleagues, You will be driven mad with all those 'layout locked..' (much more)
But for small groups of users, this might good - if they have one-file solutions
It's not ideal but it is certainly not a blocker. We have 30+ full time FM developers on staff and a lot of our projects involve 2-4 or more developers (especially if in-house developers are involved too) and we are never driven mad 
we have multi-file solutions - this helps a lot...
Exactly my thoughts as well as many other's as of late. Terms seem to stem from "opposite day" and "alternative facts."
One major point is still an issue
from 5 users
Hopeless…
That's indeed a pity.
I'm assuming that it's hard to cover the costs if there are less than five users.
The only thing that makes me jealous is that it is built on AWS infrastructure, so you have to be in the right location and/or jurisdiction to take advantage of it.
I don't remember if it was talked about here, or another venue, but likely the annual commitments allows Claris to get the rates down lower. While I believe there are ways to manage that, I imagine that is the reason for the annual and not monthly stuff.
As for the number of users, I definitely think it is related to the AWS costs, and their own internal costs. I've seen a few companies handle this, with some creative approaches, but I'm not sure they all work at scale.
Fundamentally their licensing restrictions and security issues with shared hosting, hence having to fund the whole cost of a dedicated VM.
There is no mentioning of a dedicated VM or any other separation technique in FM Cloud.
How this cloud assures due separation of customer data remains opaque.
Many cloud vendors had their snafus were data was accidentally shown to unauthorised parties.
We still wait for a list of data centers.
Some people asked about Cloud since the essentials offer started.
And at the FileMaker conference in Hamburg they mentioned the idea that some FBA maybe allowed to buy seats packs and split them up, so they could sell <5 seats to clients.
Let's see what's coming with FM 19 in May.
They should just do what every other company does and offer monthly billing at slightly more $.
Agreed
Marie answered and as far as I read there are not yet European data centers available.
So we'll have to wait a bit longer till Claris starts Cloud in Europe.
FileMaker Cloud 2.0 spins up an AWS instance with a Linux OS and FileMaker Cloud server install. That's all it is. You upload your files to it. It IS FileMaker Server running in a VM.
See: FileMaker Cloud FAQ — FileMaker
scroll down to the "How much processing power and memory comes with my FileMaker Cloud subscription?"
The describe the instance type they spin up for you based on your subscription.
If you are familiar with FM Cloud 1.0, where you also get your own instance: FM Cloud 2.0 is the same thing but instead of running in your own AWS account, it all runs in Claris' AWS account so that they can add all the DevOps stuff like monitoring and moving instances when needed.
This most of it. FileMakerPKB
The bit about a VM is partially deduction, and partially conversations with people at Claris.
Last october in Hamburg at the FMK Shrini asked the audience wether we'd like to get hands on a Linux version of FMS. He said they had at that time a VM of a CentOS/FMS in development. I suppose that is the environment for Cloud2. I think feedback was a bit lame because many of us didn't really get the idea, partly related to the language barrier. Maybe we will see a packaged VM instance for on premise ESX which would be really great.
Holger