Cloud
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On-demand computing infrastructure (servers, storage, networking) provided by a third party.
The cloud is computing infrastructure (servers, storage, databases, networking) that you rent from a provider instead of owning. AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure are the three major providers. You pay for what you use, scale up or down on demand, and let the provider handle the physical hardware.
Before the cloud, launching a web application meant buying servers, racking them in a data center, configuring networking, and hiring people to maintain them. Weeks or months of setup before writing a line of application code. The cloud reduces that to minutes. Click a button (or run a CLI command) and a server is running.
The cloud is not just "someone else's computer." It is an ecosystem of managed services: databases, queues, search, authentication, storage, machine learning, and hundreds more. The build-vs-buy decision now includes a "rent from cloud" option for almost every infrastructure component.
Examples
A startup launches on AWS.
The startup uses AWS Lambda for compute, RDS for the database, S3 for file storage, and CloudFront for CDN. Monthly bill: $200. They did not buy a single server. If they get featured on Hacker News and traffic spikes 50x, the infrastructure scales automatically.
A company migrates from on-prem to cloud.
The company spends $2M per year on data center operations for 200 servers. They migrate to AWS over 18 months. Cloud costs settle at $1.4M but with automatic scaling, no hardware maintenance, and the ability to spin up new environments in minutes instead of weeks.
Cloud costs surprise a team.
A developer leaves a test cluster running over a weekend. Monday morning: a $3,000 charge for 48 hours of compute. The team implements cost alerts, automatic shutdown of non-production environments, and required cost tags on all resources.
In practice
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Frequently asked questions
Which cloud provider should a startup use?
AWS has the most services and largest market share. Google Cloud has the best data and AI tools. Azure has the strongest enterprise integration. Most startups choose AWS by default. If your team has experience with a specific provider, use that one. The learning curve matters more than feature differences.
Is the cloud always cheaper than on-premises?
Not always. At very large scale (thousands of servers with predictable workloads), owning hardware can be cheaper. Dropbox famously saved $75M by moving off AWS. But for most companies, the cloud is cheaper because you do not need a data center team and you only pay for what you use.
Related terms
Software or infrastructure that runs on a company's own servers in their own facilities.
A cloud model where the provider manages all infrastructure and you only pay for actual execution time.
Lightweight, portable packages that bundle application code with all its dependencies.
An open-source system for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.
Managing servers, networks, and cloud resources through code files instead of manual configuration.
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