[pgwhalen]

> So basically, most people using AWS is definitely people who don't need it to scale.

This is what we would expect, right? Surely the huge majority of AWS users are small and wouldn't have the slightest interest in owning/managing their own hardware.

[margorczynski]

Well the biggest "scalers" have become Cloud providers themselves.

I think there's a good saying about Cloud and scaling, paraphrasing - "if you don't start on Cloud that's unwise and if you (over)stay that's insane". I guess as your solution reaches maturity and stability (no sudden swings in usage or complete changes in the architecture) then you should start thinking about some on-prem solution with maybe the hardware being leased along with maitenance.