> It’s cheaper—and less frustrating for your developers—to pay more for better hardware to keep your team on track.
I agree with this point, 100%. And not just in the context of build hardware. It's often cheaper to pay for specialized services rather than paying in-house developers to do those things. I've lost count of the number of times in my career that I've spent days of effort (at $200/hr) so that the company I was working for could avoid paying for some $15/mo SaaS.
But you know, when you're scared of the unknown unknowns, the risk, managed services are attractive.
It is the lost productivity of the developer not making the things you’re paying them for.
The reason the business is willing to spend $x a year on the developer is because the developer produces >$x a year of value, in the form of revenue generating software.
If you divert 5% of your time into doing something else, you are taking money the business wanted to invest into capital (new software features) and spending it on… something else. Lunch orders or whatever. Not making capital, anyhow.
But with automation already in place cost to both maintain that and that once-a-month visit to replace a hard disk in datacenter, or once-a year half-day to install few servers is far cheaper than anything cloud, especially if you need bandwidth