> Having your own datacenter requires someone to manage that hardware. You do not have to go all the way to running your own DC. There are plenty of bare-metal

> Having your own datacenter requires someone to manage that hardware. You do not have to go all the way to running your own DC. There are plenty of bare-metal providers that will provide you the machine with full root access while handling all the hardware maintenance, DC, logistics, etc, all for a flat monthly fee and no junk fees like bandwidth charges, etc. > But you also have to have the hardware for your peak utilization. The scaling up/down argument only works if the cloud resources were reasonably priced. With how overpriced they are (add in all the other junk fees like bandwidth, storage, etc) and you'll work out that a stack sized for peak load at a conventional non-cloud host is still cheaper to run than the minimum-load-sized stack at a cloud. The only situation the "scaling up/down" argument works out for is if you need large amounts of hardware for very infrequent events like an AI training task or data transformation job.