Well, that&#x27;s one way to break the ice :)<p>I have a bit more of a nuanced view on this than Jason, but I totally understand where he&#x27;s coming from and when the whole cloud gravy train started rolling our perspectives overlapped much more than they do today (and quite probably since then Jason&#x27;s perspective has changed as well as perspectives do with the passing of time).<p>There are use-cases where the cloud is absolutely and utterly the wrong way to go about it. When you&#x27;re running a bank, a government institution (ever a lower government one) or something else that is mission critical and where total control of the data and maintaining end-user privacy is paramount then the cloud is <i>probably</i> not the right solution.<p>There are also use-cases where the cloud is the right solution in principle but the wrong solution in practice because of cost. Above a certain scale bandwidth and storage costs of cloud operators will always command a premium over those you get from dedicated hosting providers.<p>As for &#x27;not owning the machines&#x27;, plenty of companies lease their servers, so technically they don&#x27;t own them anyway.<p>The big problem with &#x27;the cloud&#x27; as I see it is that companies tend to rely utterly on it and do not have a &#x27;what if the cloud fails&#x27; line in their disaster recovery plans. Lose the cloud data and the company goes up in a puff of water vapor, which is what clouds are made of after all.<p>So if your use case <i>does</i> match the cloud solutions well then make sure that whatever else you do, have at least a copy of your critical data, code and your configuration information <i>outside</i> of the cloud provider. And while you&#x27;re at it, make sure that this is done in such a way that there is a separation of duties with respect to those that can administer the cloud portion and those that can access those just-in-case-the-shit-hits-the-fan backups.<p>Just so you don&#x27;t end up like codespaces did.<p>Finally, the cloud is not so much an end-station as it is a step on a much wider scale from absolute control with certain administrative duties on one end and much less control but great convenience on the other. Where on that scale constraints indicated by your comfort level, your application and your fiduciary duties allow you to pick your solution is something that is likely different for every company (and likely for every person).<p>Customers of companies would do well to research their service providers when it comes to how they are architected, just in case something goes drastically wrong so they don&#x27;t end up holding the bag.