[vilpponen]

Well said, sir. The only thing I'd add is that few people/companies want to carry the risk of paying the fixed sum for 36 months.

If this is not an issue, then your own equipment is definitely a better way to go.

[EwanToo]

Very good to see a cloud provider agree with that, it seems a lot of them want to try and force the wrong workloads into their systems :)