Solid example. I could pay Lyrasis to host an instance of Archivesspace for me. They'd control updates, backups, etc, I'd just use the web interface to manage my archival collections.

OR I could rent a server, install Archivesspace myself (it's open source), sysadmin it myself, take on all that headache and control.

They're both in the cloud, but one's software as a service (SAaS) and the other is just a Linux box on someone else's machine. The second is cheaper in my experience, but only if you have someone that can sysadmin it. Otherwise you've got a learning curve ahead of you.

(it's late, so feel free to tell me I've misread the thread).