I have the opposite experience. We have a quite storage-heavy service (video delivery, multiple versions of each), and we recently had to upgrade our SAN to a)

I have the opposite experience. We have a quite storage-heavy service (video delivery, multiple versions of each), and we recently had to upgrade our SAN to a) a newer system and b) more capacity. As part of this process, we looked into AWS and similar products, and with a naive 1:1 move it would be 3 times more expensive than getting a hardware deal with ramp-up (make a deal for X, buy 20% * X upfront, then buy the rest as needed). Implement some better scaling up and down might have decreased the cost to only a 2x multiplier. Having your own hardware is not a walk in the part, and you need at least one experienced sysadmin to help with server setup, but I feel that for a steady company the cost benefit alone is worth it. We still use a CDN on top of our setup to alleviate pressure to our servers, but otherwise everything runs on our own hardware.