You may be right, but I wonder if the author of the article is aware that one of the leading cloud friendly distros, CoreOS, uses systemd. If fact, systemd is an integral part of fleet:
With fleet, you can treat your CoreOS cluster as if it shared a single init system. It encourages users to write applications as small, ephemeral units that can easily migrate around a cluster of self-updating CoreOS machines.
RedHat's geard, which is part of OpenShift, also uses systemd.
It seems to me that the opposite is happening, cloud ready distros are choosing systemd.
Link to TFA is paywalled.
The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get to work.