We have these at work and there was a big outcry when IT tried to get rid of them. I use them from time to time to do things like: Keep git and other backups. Convenient place to scp files to/from. Upload files that coworkers can grab. I don't use it, but others used them as permanent IRC endpoints (using screen or tmux presumably).
Notice a cloud VM or container probably doesn't work here. You need something with a permanent presence, and shared between users (with separate Unix accounts).
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