Like most providers, it does depend. Some products are priced very competitively while others seem over-the-top. For smaller companies, the cloud is a cheaper starting point for many systems but even for larger organisations, there are savings to be made by outsourcing your servers. Do you know how much it costs to install and maintain a decent air-con system for your server room?

One of the other major advantages of cloud is that you can save a lot in support staff. Compare the wages of even 1 decent sysadmin looking after your own hardware compared to several thousand dollars of AWS and it's still loads cheaper. Hardware upgrades, OS updates etc. are often automatic or hidden.