Everybody asks why we don't do cloud, and time and time again i have to point out that the fastest per-thread cpu on ec2 costs more per month then our rented bare metal server, that benchmarks as faster per thread, and has 3x the bandwidth we need, included in the price!.
Even on a cpu level, the obsession with intel """enterprise""" cpus is leaving money on the table.
"but what about web stuff, surely that could go on the cloud!" the best cpus to run (mostly) single threaded game servers right now come with 8 to 16 cores, and we aren't running that many game servers in each region we target, so what else are we gonna do with those spare cores but load up ansible managed docker swarms to handle the webstuff?
Notice how I haven't even needed to get to the egress cost to point out how senseless going to the cloud can be.