For entities that have the CapEx money to build out their own hardware to handle expected growth, and do it a little cheaper due to volume, does it still make s

For entities that have the CapEx money to build out their own hardware to handle expected growth, and do it a little cheaper due to volume, does it still make sense to engage in the cloud game? Or is it a better option when you are starting up, and want to be able to quickly throw hardware at a problem, should the need arise? Apologies if this sounds like a pretty ignorant question, but I haven't implemented cloud-based services before. It seems like there is a hardware cost vs. people cost due to the newer nature of AWS and the like, and that needs to be factored into development / maintenance time. Saving people time by relying on a known quality like arrays of Linux servers with failure tolerance seems preferable.