For example, hardware doesn't just survive five years. As the hardware ages, the failure rate will increase. This calculation doesn't even mention this at all.

They're using Dell and I would assume bought a 5 year warranty, so they don't have to factor that in.

Regardless of a warranty, the hardware still fails and needs to be replaced. That requires maintenance. Beyond that, can they afford to wait for Dell to fix the faulty device or send a replacement, or do they need several spare units to address outages quickly.

> E.g. this article is missing even basic stuff like the (prorated) salary costs of employees buying, installing and servicing the hardware.

You say that like you don't need a dedicated team to manage AWS.

Ah, so now the developers will service the AWS instances from your end which means they can work less on delivering new features... also left out of the equation quite often :)

They’ll also wait less for IT to service their tickets requesting new infrastructure, which leads to more new feature development. There are a variety of trade-offs; not all of them have the same sign.

Do you think that would make any impact at all when they'd be looking at a $400M difference in hardware costs? People these days act like you need 5 PhDs to plug in a computer, it's insane.