CEOs are quietly realizing the AI replacement plan has a problem. Two problems, actually.
One: the token costs for running AI agents are now exceeding what they were paying the employees they fired.
Two: when the tokens run out, the AI stops. Just stops. No continuity. No workaround. Just a spinning wheel where your workforce used to be.
You fired humans to save money and bought a subscription that bills you into a corner.
The employees you let go knew what to do when things broke. The AI just invoices you for the outage.
And then thereβs the permission problem nobody wants to talk about.
To do its job, the AI agent needs access. Full access. Your systems, your patents, your contracts, your future plans. Everything you spent years building, handed over to a process that has no loyalty, no discretion, and no skin in the game.
You didnβt hire a replacement. You gave a stranger with no soul the keys to everything you own.
Enjoy.
I agree, but have found that a collocation is the "sweet spot" in terms of lowest total cost, while still owning all of your hardware and software. On-premise is also good, but is more expensive than a co-lo.
One big advantage of private ownership is depreciation. Servers can last for 10 years, and are fully depreciated after 5 years - which means you can use them with no capex payments (like driving your truck after it has been fully paid off).
Cloud is being a permanent renter, paying the most and getting the least.
My son is a TechGeek (Data Scientist). Your comments IMO illustrate the common sense I've always encouraged him to keep in mind in the tech world. The more TechGeeks like you the better I say. I'd rest a bit easier if it were that way.
I mostly agree with you here. Colo is still good IMO. However I think it was a lot better in the 90s when home internet connections were slow and fast ones were very expensive. Now everyone with a broadband connection could host whatever they want as long as it's not the world's most popular 4k adult midget video archive.
The only thing most homes need to self host would be redundant power setup and it's arguable about whether that is even needed because most of the time if your power is out so is your data. So to "do it right" you'd need a wireless or satellite uplink and a diesel generator at your home. Which is 100% doable in 2026.