[mkozlows]

So the thing is, yes, that's true. Lots of companies can get by with Cisco/Dell/EMC stuff and don't need the ultra-high-end datacenters of Amazon/Google.

And if Cisco/Dell/EMC stuff was bargain-priced and the ultra-high-end stuff was expensive, well, there you go.

But the problem is, if you want your stuff hosted on Amazon-class hardware/network topologies, it's really cheap to do so with AWS (or Azure, or whatever). And the Cisco/Dell/EMC stuff is painfully, ruinously expensive.

If the high-end thing is also the cheap thing, what's the rationale for buying the low-end, expensive thing?

[noir_lord]

Not denying the cost of AWS (I priced out S3 the other day and it's amazingly cheap) however there legitimate business cases where companies won't put data in the cloud (and in fact I've found more clients are asking about those in light of the press around Snowden/NSA/GCHQ).

[clavalle]

In a word? Control.