I do not think anyone belive clouds are cheaper. For a stable workload probably 2x as expecive. Especially when you also count the new finops department you need to know what you are actually paying for in the cloud.
What cloud do give is virtualy infinite capacity, infinite scale out performance, instant availabillity and scaleabillity up to a global presence, no up-front cost, no tear down cost, bragging rights, no long running contracts and api’s for EVERYTHING.
xkcd #2866: Snow ( imgs.xkcd.com )
xkcd.com/2866...
Microsoft leaks 38TB of private data via unsecured Azure storage ( www.bleepingcomputer.com )