These are appropriate considerations to have; and the concerns about performance are very well-founded. Nonetheless, the values I see in EC2 and AWS come in th

These are appropriate considerations to have; and the concerns about performance are very well-founded. Nonetheless, the values I see in EC2 and AWS come in the API, role management, and the centralization of services. Being able to automate everything is outstanding (even if many of the APIs feel very young). Allowing anyone in the organization access to the management console with appropriate privileges is helpful, and something that I haven't seen available from other providers - at least not with the level of customization that AWS provides. Also, knowing that just about everything is handled in one place makes things easier logistically - it's small overhead, but managing DNS and CDN and Hosting all in the same interface is convenient. Hosting decisions must be made on a case by case basis; but it's wrong to avoid EC2 (and AWS) simply because you can get better performing servers elsewhere at a lower cost per time period.