Do you think automation doesn't exist with on-prem? The vSphere terraform provider is very mature.

https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/vsphere/index.html

You can build your own machine images with packer, and actually have more control by building them from scratch (ISO) rather than being locked into a selection of base AMIs.

https://www.packer.io/docs/builders/vmware/

You can launch HA kubernetes clusters with cluster API. vSphere, openstack and even bare metal pxe all have providers

https://cluster-api.sigs.k8s.io/user/quick-start.html

Cloud native is not just for the public cloud!