I'm always wary of posts that proclaim that one thing is definitively better, especially using overly simply comparisons. Cloud offerings and usage have very

I'm always wary of posts that proclaim that one thing is definitively better, especially using overly simply comparisons. Cloud offerings and usage have very complicated billing and a huge number of line items. Many of these are very dependant on architecture and deployment choices and are very hard to predict up front. Add to that the complication that the people doing the deployments are often not optimising for price, it's a recipe for a big bill. So on one level, I completely agree with you. In my experience, it's almost always cheaper to hand roll hardware yourself. That said, of all the reasons to move into the cloud, cost should be at the bottom. Instead I feel companies should be asking themselves "Can I gain a competitive advantage by outsourcing my infrastructure?" In many cases, the answer is yes - but it depends on the business; For example I can imagine that a business like Backblaze would not be able to compete as successfully using commodity cloud storage.