as one of those unicorns
As you call them..
It is pretty depressing to see how much companies have wasted on cloud services, at any scale. It's shocking to see so many clueless morons who think it's normal to be spending a half a million a month or more on cloud services. When it's quite common to have ROI of well under 12 months (some times 6 months or less) to build stuff out yourself. Of course you may have to pay people more to attract the talent. But hey if paying someone(s) more means your able to save an extra few million a year it's probably worth it (biggest "doh" face I can make).
I remember one cloud discussion where the installation fee alone was 4x my own costs for building things outright(with tier 1 equipment and 4 hour on site support).
But word is getting around slowly but surely what a scam most cloud services are(have yet to see one that isn't myself) from either a cost, features, or availability standpoint(or all of them combined). I talk to more and more folks who want out, or have moved out, but those don't make the news.
I heard of one rarity of a startup in Seattle who was spending 25% of their REVENUE on cloud have since moved out(or are in the process of moving out I forget -- with a 6 month ROI going to of all things high end Cisco UCS gear not exactly bottom barrel), and the rarity bit is the CEO is apparently overly happy to talk with anyone about how terrible their experience with Amazon was. Usually companies just keep quiet and try to forget about it or something.
Fortunately I have not had to bang my head against incompetent management over cloud in a couple years or so(having spent my own time managing crap in Amazon for about two and a half years - by far the worst experience in my professional career - and the management at Amazon cloud whom I met with personally are equally frustrating to deal with - one of them tried to get me fired once for a blog post), and not anticipating having to do that again anytime soon.
I sort of wish I could do more, I mean I see so much fail going on but I just can't come close to even starting to address all of it. I wish I could. I wish I could help more companies from making stupid f#@$@ mistakes by going to providers like amazon.
this image has been making it's way around recently amongst folks I know and it makes me feel good to see it.
http://thenubbyadmin.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/SAY_CLOUD_AGAIN.png