The other thing I point out here is that "the cloud" is suuuper expensive, and while that is still way cheaper than hiring a me or two to handle your hardware while you are small, there comes a point pretty quickly on amazon where buying hardware and hiring a few people like me becomes cheaper for base load in the long term.

I believe that companies are staying on amazon longer than it is in their interest to do so, and I further believe that this will change when people start looking for savings during the next downturn.

For that matter, I believe that people will overreact and move in the opposite direction; you will see a fad of people buying their own hardware before they really have enough load to justify the person with the requisite hardware abilities. That's just how these in-sourcing/outsourcing fads work.