Thats exactly what they would say. Reliability track record, existing software/project restraints and enterprise relationships matter more than the price tag. That's why Intel can still charge rediculous amounts for enterprise chips for some time.
Who's making chips to compete with Intel? AMD, IBM, and nobody else (ARM isn't high-performance yet). IBM's lock-in with POWER is scary to businesses. AMD wasn't competitive for most server needs. That left Intel to charge whatever they wanted (and they did).
With EPYC, there was finally a competitive offering at a great price (not to mention a better track record with meltdown and the constant stream of spectre variants). All the same software runs on the AMD chips too.