Yes, the profit margin for cloud providers is very real—and quite costly.

I think one point that’s often overlooked is the knowledge gap between the engineers at cloud providers (such as systems, platform, or site reliability engineers) and those that an individual company, even a large one, is able to hire.

This gap is a key reason why some companies are willing—or even forced—to pay the premium.

If average or mediocre management skills and a moderately complex tech stack are sufficient, then on-premise can still be the most cost-effective choice today.