100% agree on shifting capex to opex though, capital works teams are super in favour of that, oddly enough.
No, not really. You can hardly find old used servers for less than 1000$, and you need to use beyond a a1.metal instance with 16vCPU and 32GB of RAM to even come close to that cost
> Cloud stuff only really makes sense when your resource requirements as super spiky.
No, not really. Cloud stuff makes all the sense in the world if all you need is a VM connected to the internet working 24h/day without problems. You can get that for less than 5$ a month, which would require 3 or 4 years to pay back if instead you waste your money on hardware.
> You can hardly find old used servers for less than 1000$
I picked up a second hand Dell PowerEdge 610 with 96GB of RAM for $400 AU, it's overkill by a large factor for what I need but damn. Either I was super lucky or servers aren't (weren't?) expensive.
> You can get that for less than 5$ a month pocket change and host it
Until you actually use it and then it ramps up rapidly to the point where you'd be far better off just buying a server.
And good luck selling to enterprises when the vulnerability scanner lights up like a Christmas tree with critical and un-patchable flaws on your switches/routers/UPS/PDUs/storage arrays/servers/door locks/cooling system/fire suppression/cameras. Double for the DR site. Because you need all that stuff, and you have to maintain it all 24x7 which means lots of salaries.
That's where you get it all wrong. It is not about the price, at all. It is all about avoiding large upfront capex with a small periodical opex, and in the process have virtually boundless growth potential.
Think about it: when you happen to need a bit more computational resources to run an app, is it easier to convince your boss the need to pay, say, 100€/month for extra VMs, or is it easier to convince your boss to shelve $2k to buy an extra rack? And how many times are you willing to have that same conversation with your boss whenever you run out of computational resources?