> What boggles the mind is people are often sold the cloud even though their org isn't serving millions of users, and could just as easily operate as a box in a closet.
Capex vs opex may play a part here. Also, companies in general seems to have transitioned to using services in general. 20/30 years ago companies had cleaners in them. Now everyone uses a cleaning service.
I have read about a dozen and a half articles about capex vs. opex, and it still makes absolutely no sense to me why companies prefer paying over double for opex what they'd pay for equivalent capex over the same lifecycle.
Either corporate accounting is some mystical art that makes money appear where there isn't if certain practices are followed, or there's some collective mass delusion that opex is just better? I don't know, it's a concept that truly baffles me.
For a startup it makes perfect sense to avoid high CAPEX: it is not worth to invest into own infrastructure which will have positive ROI in 3 years, if you are not sure that you startup will still be alive in 3 years.
Why big established companies prefer high OPEX to lower CAPEX is less clear.
Indeed, I fully understand why a startup goes for the cloud: Either it scales fast enough that the dynamic scaling of cloud is key, or it fails and assets become pointless anyways. But even then, once a startup hits a certain level of stability, it makes sense to invest in your own infrastructure to minimize expense.
Capex vs opex may play a part here. Also, companies in general seems to have transitioned to using services in general. 20/30 years ago companies had cleaners in them. Now everyone uses a cleaning service.