It's very similar to the argument that Jeff Atwood gave a while back that "If it's a core business function -- do it yourself, no matter what" ( http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/10/programming-is-hard... )

And taken on those terms - not on the cost accounting of cloud vs local - it makes sense to me. Is it a convincing "no matter what" argument against cloud hosting in all cases? I'd say no - there will be cases where sheer scale or fluctuations in scale make cloud hosting more attractive. as the article admits.