Today, cloud computing is one of the most promising upcoming technologies and enterprise—no matter how big or small, almost every companies and organization has adopted it as a part of their IT strategy. It is difficult these days to have any meaningful conversation about an IT strategy without including cloud computing in the overall solution discussions.

Cloud computing, or simply the cloud in layman terms, refers to the availability of resources on the internet. These resources are made available to users on the internet as services. For example, storage is available on demand through the internet to users for them to store their files, documents, and so on. Here, storage is a service provided by a cloud provider.

A cloud provider is an enterprise or consortium of companies that provide cloud services to other enterprises and consumers. They host and manage the services on behalf of the user. They are responsible for enabling and maintaining the health of services. Typically, there are large data centers across the globe opened by cloud providers to cater to IT demands from users.

Cloud resources consist of hosting services on on-demand infrastructure, such as compute, network, and storage facilities. This flavor of the cloud is known as Infrastructure as a Service.