Perhaps it is because given technical capability, I cannot understand why Amazon is even being discussed when it is technically inferior to what Joyent offers and Amazon is the most expensive provider.

> I cannot understand why...

Sounds to me that your understanding is the real problem here. There are a lot of resources you can use to read up on the value proposition, and while I do think AWS is pretty expensive and perhaps priced a bit too high, it's a great platform that goes way beyond just the speed of the VM tech.