Puppetlabs has certainly stepped up their marketing; 6-8 months ago you could have flipped the words puppet and chef in your post and it would have been complet

Puppetlabs has certainly stepped up their marketing; 6-8 months ago you could have flipped the words puppet and chef in your post and it would have been completely true. I'd argue puppet is winning any time there are operations staff, chef is winning when pure developers are also doing operations. Either is fine and both are leaps and bounds ahead of the competition (which is generally "no configuration management" or "a hodge-podge of homegrown scripts").