Cloud computing is the distribution of computing services, such as servers, storage resources, databases, networks, software, analysis, and intelligence, via the internet (the cloud). The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the main cloud computing technologies in relation to the Python programming language.

First, we will describe the PythonAnywhere platform, with which we will deploy Python applications on the cloud. In the context of cloud computing, two emerging technologies will be identified: containers and serverless technologies.

Containers represent the new approach to the virtualization of resources, and the serverless technologies represent a step forward in the field of cloud services because they can speed up the release of applications.

In fact, you do not have to worry about the provisioning, the servers, or the infrastructure configurations. You only have to create functions (namely, Lambda functions) that can operate independently from the applications.

In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes:

• What is cloud computing?
• Understanding the cloud computing architecture
• Developing web applications with PythonAnywhere
• Dockerizing a Python application
• Introducing serverless computing

We will also see how to take advantage of the AWS Lambda framework for the development of Python applications.