These are not magic features. You still have to make your app scale. And once you did it, it works as well on dedicated servers.
Dedicated servers come with dedicated disks or SSDs, memory, CPUs, network cards.
Decent dedicated hosting providers deliver new servers in a few hours. And they too provide load balancing, dns, filers, backups, elastic ips, etc.
The only difference between AWS or a decent dedicated servers provider is the time it takes to put a new servers online. Minutes with AWS, hours with dedicated servers.
Considering that AWS prices can easily be twice the price of dedicated servers, renting a few spare dedicated servers is still cheaper than AWS, and delays are even shorter.
Dedicated providers don't provide SQS, SWF, S3, SimpleDB, RDS, DynamoDB, EMR, Search. Which for me anyway are essential as they are enterprise class, very cheap, managed, scalable solutions.
The best combination is a dedicated server for the app server that is close to Amazon.
If Bezos loosened up control, there could be an EXCELLENT secondary market of colocation space directly connected to AWS in all zones. The Mall next to the Mall, still makes the Mall the main attraction. Give me 10GE, infiniband, etc out the back door of an AWS data center and I will give u the world!
Dedicated servers come with dedicated disks or SSDs, memory, CPUs, network cards.
Decent dedicated hosting providers deliver new servers in a few hours. And they too provide load balancing, dns, filers, backups, elastic ips, etc.
The only difference between AWS or a decent dedicated servers provider is the time it takes to put a new servers online. Minutes with AWS, hours with dedicated servers.
Considering that AWS prices can easily be twice the price of dedicated servers, renting a few spare dedicated servers is still cheaper than AWS, and delays are even shorter.