Keep the same interface at what cost? Public cloud is already expensive and Cisco-on-AWS or VMware-on-AWS are really expensive. In many cases customers are buying the same functionality twice which feels exploitative.
Is people paying amounts of money to a company is the problematic part? I mean, I get it, but that is not enough literal justification to single out Cisco Systems from myriad other large corporations.
I don't think anyone is buying Cisco-on-AWS at anywhere near the same volume as Cisco gear in its heyday. It's likely for applications where traffic throughput is low or unimportant — e.g. training labs, etc. These are likely applications where it would have been cost prohibitive to buy a "real" Cisco router.
I'd be pretty surprised if people were running an actual large production network on Cisco-AMIs-on-AWS.
