>That's not really outsourcing. That's shifting from capital expenses to operating expenses The "capital (depreciation) vs operating" is only talking about har

>That's not really outsourcing. That's shifting from capital expenses to operating expenses The "capital (depreciation) vs operating" is only talking about hardware. Having in-house IT employees to install new servers, run new cabling, change tapes for backups, etc, is not a capital expense. Migrating to AWS can shift the FTEs from XYZ company's payroll to Amazon's payroll. Presumably, Amazon's engineers can do IT admin operations in a more cost-efficient manner. That's "outsourcing." Yes, there would still be in-house employees as "AWS admins" but overall, there should be a net-reduction of FTEs doing commodity-IT grunt work.