There's a fundamental misunderstanding of what The Cloud is that seems to pervade discussions like this. Too many technical people don't understand what they're looking at.
The Cloud is not "a computer". The Cloud is a public utility. You don't rent the transformers at an electric utility company - because why the hell would you? It's just one component of a much larger system that is valueless to the consumer without all the other components.
What these people are selling is more like a battery that you can purchase that plugs into the electric grid. But why would you want to purchase a battery? It degrades over time, losing value, and eventually needs to be recycled, and somebody has to deal with all that. Renting is the perfect way to push all of that time-consuming and complex maintenance out to someone else who can lower cost with volume.
The idea that renting servers is not sustainable would suggest that somehow computers are not like housing, cars, shop vacs, or any of the million other things you can rent. A computer is an expensive commodity like any other, and renting makes perfect sense a lot of the time.
If you need to purchase, for economic, load, tax, regulatory, or other reasons, there are already ready-made computers with (or without) service contracts and supported OSes that can be plopped into any colo, and colos sell dedicated machines already. This pitch doesn't include anything new other than buzzwords. Yeah I'm sure they did a bunch of engineering - that nobody will ever need. I'm calling shenanigans.
The Cloud is not "a computer". The Cloud is a public utility. You don't rent the transformers at an electric utility company - because why the hell would you? It's just one component of a much larger system that is valueless to the consumer without all the other components.
What these people are selling is more like a battery that you can purchase that plugs into the electric grid. But why would you want to purchase a battery? It degrades over time, losing value, and eventually needs to be recycled, and somebody has to deal with all that. Renting is the perfect way to push all of that time-consuming and complex maintenance out to someone else who can lower cost with volume.
The idea that renting servers is not sustainable would suggest that somehow computers are not like housing, cars, shop vacs, or any of the million other things you can rent. A computer is an expensive commodity like any other, and renting makes perfect sense a lot of the time.
If you need to purchase, for economic, load, tax, regulatory, or other reasons, there are already ready-made computers with (or without) service contracts and supported OSes that can be plopped into any colo, and colos sell dedicated machines already. This pitch doesn't include anything new other than buzzwords. Yeah I'm sure they did a bunch of engineering - that nobody will ever need. I'm calling shenanigans.