If you know your traffic well, private cloud saves a lot of money. Few years back i bet hybrid clouds will take over and for some reason it did not happen. I still believe hybrid cloud is the solution for mid size and up companies. You definitely need cloud provides for handling traffic spikes.
Part of the organizational allure of migrating to the cloud is being able to rationalize headcount. Hybrid clouds, while bringing a lot of potential upside, are complex. While you can potentially reduce the scale of labor involved, you still have to retain all of the core skillsets you already have to maintain your on-prem locations. Then add headcount to optimize the cloud deployment, _plus_ the ever elusive skillset of the individuals that can marry the two in such a way where you show operational savings from the hybrid model.
I am not at liberty to say the company name, but i do directly know of one person at a director level who was fired for using AWS.
They turned on encryption for an option and did not realize the huge price difference between the encrypted and unencrypted option meant $9000 per day in additional charges. After 1 month (30 days) this came to light, and he was fired.
Yes, this happens with AWS. Controlling costs is a very important part of using any cloud, let alone AWS where the charges are... not as transparent as one would wish. :)
EDIT: btw, he was not fired for using AWS, he was fired for making unnecessary costs.
I'm sure at least a few companies have gone bankrupt or people have gotten pink-slipped for using AWS and not paying attention to auto-scaling settings...
It's scarily easy to accrue huge bills if you're not watching things closely.
