[meskyanichi]

> The "scalability" thing isnt about adding some ram or getting a larger proc.

You'd be surprised how many people that actually use EC2 think it is.

> Yes white boxes are cheap. Site negotiations, design, procurement, networking, operations, and maintenance are expensive in dollars and time.

It's called planning ahead of time. If not, then here's a suggestion: Use EC2 until you set it up and migrate, if you cannot wait that is.

All in all I don't mind whether people use EC2 for whatever reason. Just stating my opinion. I agree of course that in terms of "convenience" is has the upper hand. Not having to wait for boxes to be added to data centers, being able to spin up boxes in multiple regions through a single company/console. Maybe your use case does justify using EC2. Many other people clearly do not (hence all the whining because of all the downtime, which they wouldn't have had if they deployed to multiple AZs/Regions).