A lot of outsourcing decisions seem to be made on the premise of "what if it breaks?" It's a terrible fallacy.
Your wafer saw (or server) that is utilized 1% of the time is going to need a lot less maintenance than a shared wafer saw that is used 16 hours a day. You will actually experience a lot less downtime by investing in your own wafer saw (or your own servers) rather than outsourcing (to a foundry or a cloud provider).
I think the real draw of outsourcing is diffusion of responsibility: when it breaks, you can blame someone else.
Your wafer saw (or server) that is utilized 1% of the time is going to need a lot less maintenance than a shared wafer saw that is used 16 hours a day. You will actually experience a lot less downtime by investing in your own wafer saw (or your own servers) rather than outsourcing (to a foundry or a cloud provider).
I think the real draw of outsourcing is diffusion of responsibility: when it breaks, you can blame someone else.