[geggam]

I have had this debate with so many people, AWS is not cheaper than your own hosting. Period.

What you get from AWS is the logistics pipeline is already built as is the infrastructure should you suddenly require to serve factors of traffic more.

The ROI of AWS comes from the backend and capex vs opex debates.

Example : The CFO can go to the board and explain we are getting ready to reduce opex by laying off 10 developers at 150k yr during any meeting. The capex cost is usually fixed and hard to explain away.

[satanspastaroll]

I think the best cases for AWS is counter to marketing, very small companies. Their native offerings do make things great for a while when you're starting out.

The other is stupendous burst activity, like you just need a thousand(s) cores for a couple hours. Of course this doesen't mean the baseload has to be in AWS, just easy for small teams.

[geggam]

Agreed.