you also need people to babysit, manage, and build out ec2 instances. They are constantly failing, being retired, getting random poor performance, etcetcetc.

you also need people to babysit, manage, and build out ec2 instances. They are constantly failing, being retired, getting random poor performance, etcetcetc. The failure rates vs physical hardware are incredibly high (just personal experience but I doubt you'll find many who disagree). Once your systems are up and running you don't need to do much. Remote hands will replace a hard drive for $100, for example.