Obviously if you try to shoehorn your current modrate sized esx/hyper-v/whatever environment to the cloud as is, that’s going to be expensive.

Yeah, my experience has been in the MSP space for small to medium companies. We’ve had tons of customers forego upgrading local hardware to go to a cloud provider, then have to do it in reverse a few years later when they realize they’ve already paid out the cost of their hardware and licensing agreement in hosting costs, and still have to keep paying to run the same systems.