There are absolutely situations in which a substantially cheaper but less-secure/safe solution to a problem can make economic sense. Suppose you have $5k, you

There are absolutely situations in which a substantially cheaper but less-secure/safe solution to a problem can make economic sense. Suppose you have $5k, you need a car in order to feed your family, and that only the following two options are available: You can buy the safe car for $10k or a less safe car for $5k. In that situation, less safety can be a reasonable choice. Indeed, there was a long period of time in which Volvos were demonstrably more safe than other lower-cost vehicles, yet people bought the lower-cost vehicles. In the cloud-offering world, instead of marketing servers as "less-secure", they can simply offer "more-secure" options that run on non-HT hardware. HIPAA-compliant cloud-buyers will have to upgrade, and then the cloud vendors can slowly lower the prices on both, making the less-secure option lower cost than the present day.