IaaS Solutions: Which did you choose, and What problem(s) has the solution solved for you?

Why buy, when you can rent - and rent what you need? Buying hardware, installing hardware, maintaining hardware versus paying a usage fee. My team is refocused on business value add activity

Hi Steve.

I would say that the decision involves two major problems:
(1) consolidation and better use of infrastructure (when on-premise)
(2) agility and operational efficiency, bringing automation to manage the infrastructure, quickly expanding capacity resources, pay as you go (when public cloud)

The decision can vary a lot, some due to long term relationship with VARs, some look for market leadership, price and so on. The leaders today have similar prices, a full range of services that can be integrated with your applications, world presence ... which makes the decision more difficult.

One thing that is helping to close deals is that most of the companies that don't have strong cloud skills trust in their solutions partners/integrator or professional services shop, which bring us to the first line of this answer, relationship.
Slide 45 of this presentation - http://www.slideshare.net/North_Bridge/2016-future-of-cloud-computing-study