[ordiel]

Having worked for 2 of the largest cloud providers (1 of them beimg the largest) i have to say "The Cloud" just doesnt makes sense (maybe with the exception of cloud storage) yet for most use cases, this including start ups, small and, mid size companies its just way to expensive for the benefits it provides, it moves your hardware acquisitions /maintainance cost to development costs, you just think better/cheaper because that cost comes in small monthly chunks rather than as a single bill, plus you add all security risks either those introduced by the vendor or those introduced by the masive complexity and poor training of the developers which if you want to avoid will have to pay by hiring a developer competent in security for that particular cloud provider

[manv1]

Having worked in 3 startups that were AWS-first, I can say that you've learned the completely wrong lessons from your time at your cloud providers.

Building on AWS has provided scale, security, and redundancy at a substantially lower cost than doing any on-prem solution (except for a shitty one strung together with lowendbox machines).

The combined AWS bill for the three startups is less than the cost of an F5, even on a non-inflation adjusted basis.

The cloud doesn't mean that you can be totally clueless. I've had experience in HA/scalability/redundancy/deployment/development/networking/etc. It means that if you do know what you're doing you can deliver a scalable HA solution at a ridiculously lower price point than a DIY solution using bare iron and colo.

[ordiel]

"The combined bill" during which time period?

1 Month, for sure. What about 1 year? Also did those companies required to provide any training or hiring to achieve that? Because you also need to add that to the cost comparison

If you are comparing one month bill agains 1 time purchase (which if is correctly chosen should not happen but once every 10 years at the earliest) for sure it will be cheaper. When it comes down to scalability, development and deployment, you should check your tech stack rather than your infrastructure. Kubernetees and containerization should easily take care of those with on premise hardware while also reducing complexity + you will no longer have to worry for off the chart network transit fees