There's however a middle-ground between run your own colocated hardware and cloud. It's called "dedicated" servers and many hosting providers (from budget bottom-of-the-barrel to "contact us" pricing) offer it.

Those take on the liability of sourcing, managing and maintaining the hardware for a flat monthly fee, and would take on such risk. If they make a bad bet purchasing hardware, you won't be on the hook for it.

This seems like a point many pro-cloud people (intentionally?) overlook.