> If all you need is machines then there is still a massive benefit in using the cloud. “massive” is an overstatement. “some” would be more accurate. And your

> If all you need is machines then there is still a massive benefit in using the cloud. “massive” is an overstatement. “some” would be more accurate. And your example is correct, which is why I said “generally” in my post rather than “always” or “never”. In fact my current project is using AWS in exactly the way you described. > If you have never racked machines I have done. Many times. :) And there are ways you can get machines at short notice without going down the AWS route. In fact it’s actually pretty easy and used to be really common. I used to use all sorts of different VPS and dedicated hosting for personal projects (while managing on prem stuff professionally). These days a lot of those bigger companies are now just wrapped up as part of “cloud services” but there are still some smaller providers out there doing things old school. In fact I have a few GFX cards for machine learning in a London data centre managed by one such independent provider. > And if you need a 1000 machines for x years which otherwise you'd put in your own data center you can absolutely go to AWS, GCP, OCI and bid them down against each other. You’re now talking about cost optimisation and commitment-based discounts, which is a whole other tangent. Anyways, my point wasn’t that the cloud is more or less expensive than on prem. it was that designing your cloud architecture to be cloud agnostic is more expensive and rarely worthwhile compared with making use of the services offered by whichever cloud provider you’re using.