I don't think he was making an argument for ease of maintenance, but rather, reliability per dollar. Even if you've got two crappy datacenters, you're at least redundantly crappy.
That only works if you value sysadmin time at $0/hr.
You need a capable sysadmin anyways. It makes sense to pay her/him to design and scale your "platform" properly, especially if you're making any money from it.