Head In The Cloud (or Somewhere)

Came across this posting whilst surfing, with the following:

"For example, one large package deliverer sees a 400% increase in its network traffic, database needs, and computing power over a single 45 day window. Utilizing a service such as Azure will allow them to pay for that excess capacity only in the 45 days it is needed, not the other 320 days a year when it is not utilized, but must be maintained, upgraded, and licensed."

Why folks persist in believing that there is a Free Lunch up in The Cloud??? The notion that seasonal/repetitive demand spikes for IT resources are uniformly distributed over a time period (day/week/year) is just silly. Yes, as a loss leader, a Cloud Vendor may choose to not add a Load Factor Penalty. In the beginning. But, that's not sustainable, because demand spikes aren't uniformly distributed. Cloud vendors will make the clients pay for all that idle storage and cpu (and a nice profit on the idle riches), you betcha. That package deliverer experienced the same spike as all of the retail chain. And all of the energy vendors. And so on. It's Econ. 101, folks.