[falcolas]

Honestly, I'm not even talking about startups here - it's established companies who have grown too big for the PaaS offerings, or who have specialized needs that PaaS providers don't offer. Such as an HTTPS enabled Redis cluster in AWS. Just recently started to become available, after years of our insistence for it.

Not to mention, the costs for PaaS providers don't scale up well (if they can even handle the load). They're great for startups on VC, but deadly for companies who want positive cash flow.