A good definition of The Cloud is just "servers in a datacenter" so the discussion is best framed as Private Cloud (on-prem or co-located servers) vs Public Clo

A good definition of The Cloud is just "servers in a datacenter" so the discussion is best framed as Private Cloud (on-prem or co-located servers) vs Public Cloud (AWS, etc) or some combination. People with expertise in running private clouds and using public cloud services can judge each case pretty easily, by taking into account the organization's technical needs, plans, budget, abilities, etc. And for non-experts, the question is even simpler: use the public clouds if or until it becomes a technical or financial blocker. And in that case, hire an expert. There's really not a lot of room for controversy. It seems most of the arguments come from people without the relevant expertise, who only know how to develop in public clouds, responding defensively. Like people with little programming experience flaming each other over which language is "best". There's no single "best" cloud option, since they're just different tools for different things. Sometimes either way would work, in which case it comes down to personal preference, and sometimes there's a clearly better option for a specific organization's needs. Framed correctly, it's a "boring" question just like most technical questions should be.