Cloud is expensive for sure, especially so for VMs and bandwidth.
But cloud also comes with a lot of convenience - for example, having managed k8s, and highly-available serverless, messaging, blob storage and databases.
Some of that is particularly challenging to get right, especially for databases.
It's difficult to justify cloud VMs for heavy processing tho - they really are just so damned expensive compared to bare metal and VPS providers, and there isn't that much extra convenience for VMs in the same way there is for PaaS stuff.
But cloud also comes with a lot of convenience - for example, having managed k8s, and highly-available serverless, messaging, blob storage and databases.
Some of that is particularly challenging to get right, especially for databases.
It's difficult to justify cloud VMs for heavy processing tho - they really are just so damned expensive compared to bare metal and VPS providers, and there isn't that much extra convenience for VMs in the same way there is for PaaS stuff.