As the landscape of cloud deployment options continues to expand, developers are often left with pressing questions: "Should I choose Kubernetes or managed container services?", "When does a serverless architecture make sense?", "How can I best automate my infrastructure deployment?", "Which tools align with my application requirements and organizational constraints?". The plethora of options can often lead to decision paralysis or ill-suited choices.

This talk aims to address these questions by delving into a comparative analysis of popular deployment platforms - AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), AWS Lambda, Azure Functions - and infrastructure automation tools - AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK), Azure Bicep, and HashiCorp's Terraform.

We'll explore the unique strengths, weaknesses, and application scenarios of each offering, aiding developers, architects, and DevOps professionals in making informed, strategic decisions. We'll also examine the interplay between infrastructure automation tools and deployment platforms, discussing how they can be leveraged for more efficient and robust deployment pipelines.

This talk will shed light on key considerations such as cost-effectiveness, scalability, resilience, and ease of management when deploying distributed applications. Empower yourself with the knowledge and confidence to make optimal decisions on this illuminating journey as we decode the deployment dilemmas.