What you care about at any reasonable scale (ie. the point at which costs matter) is $/serviced request. That usually ends up being dominated either in $/cpu cy

What you care about at any reasonable scale (ie. the point at which costs matter) is $/serviced request. That usually ends up being dominated either in $/cpu cycle or $/iop. The current problem is that most cloud platforms suck iops which makes them far more expencive then they really should be. Cloud vs. dedi vs. colo in terms of raw prices though, depends entirely on your price of money and the price you can negotiate with your provider.