[jrs235]

Long term yes, it's cheaper to own than rent/lease.

Renting/leasing is often more cash flow friendly in the short/near term (due to not needing large sums of initial investment and [in the U.S.] tax implications of OpEx vs CapEx expenditures)

If you're trying to preserve capital in a start-up situation renting/leasing is the way to go until you know what resources you actually need.

[noodle]

It's also risk mitigation. You can spin those AWS instances up and down smoothly depending on your needs.

You can't get rid of a 1+ year lease agreement, or something that you purchased. Nor is it a good idea to buy/lease more quickly without really thinking about the long-term financials.

[toomuchtodo]

YES.

Once the business fundamentals (profitability/cost savings), load profile, and your team's skills can support physical infrastructure, it makes sense to do so. Until then, virtualize!

[nasalgoat]

Unless you're running spot instances, that logic doesn't work.

[noodle]

Could you elaborate on this?

[nasalgoat]

Reserved instances are paid for a full year.

[noodle]

1) There's a difference between on-demand and spot instances.

2) Well... yes. My entire premise is based upon not making any long-term leases/purchases, as I stated. Hence, if you bought a 1 year reserved instance, you're doing long-term leasing, and therefore your situation doesn't fall into what I was discussing. So, I'm not sure what your point is.

[1qaz2wsx3edc]

I beg to differ, in that the article doesn't consider the cost-benefit around the effort required to run them. Running your own hardware will cost significantly more time to manage than the latter, in my opinion.

[nasalgoat]

Or you lease to own the hardware. Best of both worlds.