The big problem for server operations is not the damned servers but all of the infrastructure you need to keep them running, like power cooling network/storage and internet connectivity.

The cloud is not easy but damn trying to get cooling and power efficiency of an small server room anywhere near the efficiency levels most big data-center publish is next to impossible as is multi vendor internet connectivity.

With the cloud all of that kind of goes away as it's managed by whatever data-center operator that cloud is running on but what people forget is that that is also true for old fashioned colocation services which is often offering a better cost/value then cloud.

And while it's definitely harder to manage stuff like AWS or Azure because it bleeds a lot of abstractions small scall vpc providers hide from you or that you dont really get with a single home server, it's not hard on the scale of having to run a couple of racks worth of vmware servers with SAN based storage.