Ummmm what? Even if they wanted to use the cloud they could have literally opted for any of the other providers. If you have a good on premise service provider

Ummmm what? Even if they wanted to use the cloud they could have literally opted for any of the other providers. If you have a good on premise service provider and reasonable compute/scaling requirements, staying on prem can actually save you a ton of money. It’s very situation specific. That being said, for companies starting out, I agree completely with you that starting in the cloud is the best strategy.