Amazon didn't create it. I was there for the mass cloud migrates of the last 15 years. It isn't that AWS requires no specialist expertise, it's that it's a certain kind of expertise that's easier to plan for and manage. Managing physical premises, hardware upgrade costs, etc are all skills your typical devops jockey doesn't need anymore. Unless you're fine with hosting your company's servers under your desk, it's the hidden costs of metal that makes businesses move to cloud.
Fortunately there are companies like Deft, OVH, Hetzner, Equinix, etc that handle all of that for you for a flat fee and while achieving economies of scale.
Colocation is rarely worth it unless you have non-standard requirements. If you just need a general-purpose machine, any of the aforementioned providers will sort you out just fine.
