I didn't see that as a lesson learned. You have effort involved in moving 'sites' regardless of if you host your own equipment or 'rent'. If you're on the 'cloud' you have to potentially learn about a new providers API, test to make sure that the server blocks you rent are of the same level and capabilities as what your old provider had (meaning performance testing, etc.).
Basically you have pain regardless of what you do, one just abstracts a very specific piece of the equation away from you. Frankly I see it as they have the talent in-house to manage their own equipment, and thus they can realize a tremendous cost savings for their monthly bills by not running everything on top of AWS... and no matter which way you shake it, five racks of equipment on a cloud service is going to be more expensive.
Basically you have pain regardless of what you do, one just abstracts a very specific piece of the equation away from you. Frankly I see it as they have the talent in-house to manage their own equipment, and thus they can realize a tremendous cost savings for their monthly bills by not running everything on top of AWS... and no matter which way you shake it, five racks of equipment on a cloud service is going to be more expensive.