other than SMTP relay issues, even relying on Exchange online has it is own limitations by default the SMTP controls the rate limiting for SMTP per minute which causing issues for large scale organizations, 10000 message per day in some sceniros is not enough for a legit non-bulk emails, for example notifications from ERP system to be sent across all organization users is a problem, relying on 3rd party tools like SendGrid as example is not always easy to especially when security requirements requires OAuth since the traffic will be over internet, while Exchange on Premises provides till date the best option for these scenarios, and securly accessible within the internal network without exposing it over internet.