[graemep]

For smaller businesses it seems to be its the safe option because its what everyone does.

I have even had it suggested that it might make selling a business or attracting investors harder if you used your own servers (not at the scale of having your own datacentre, just rented servers - smaller businesses still).

Another thing that comes up is that it might be more expensive but its a small fraction of operational expenses so no one really cares.

[whstl]

For smaller businesses it's often "the only thing Joe knew when he was building it".