Technology
Definition
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services — servers, storage, databases, networking, software, and analytics — over the internet from shared infrastructure operated by providers like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.
Before cloud computing, businesses that needed servers had to purchase physical hardware, install it in a data center or server room, configure it, and maintain it indefinitely. This model required large upfront capital expenditure, significant IT operations overhead, and resulted in either over-provisioning (paying for capacity you don't use) or under-provisioning (unable to handle traffic spikes). Cloud computing replaced this with on-demand infrastructure available by the minute, with costs that scale directly with usage.
Cloud services are organized into three primary delivery models. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides raw compute, storage, and networking — you manage the operating system, middleware, and applications (examples: AWS EC2, Google Compute Engine). Platform as a Service (PaaS) provides a complete managed environment where you deploy your application code without managing the underlying servers (examples: Heroku, Google App Engine, AWS Elastic Beanstalk). Software as a Service (SaaS) is fully managed applications delivered over the internet (Salesforce, Gmail, Slack). Most businesses use a mix of all three.
The major cloud providers — Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) — each offer hundreds of services: managed databases, machine learning APIs, CDNs, message queues, data warehouses, identity management, and more. Choosing the right services, architecting systems for cost efficiency, and managing cloud spend (which can balloon dramatically without governance) requires genuine expertise. Cloud cost optimization has become its own discipline as businesses discover that naively migrating to the cloud can actually increase costs.
For businesses without large in-house IT teams, cloud computing is the enabling infrastructure for nearly everything digital — websites, applications, data storage, email, collaboration, and security. But the complexity of modern cloud architectures, the diversity of service options, and the risk of cost overruns mean that professional guidance significantly improves outcomes. A cloud architect or technology consultant can design the right architecture for your scale, select the appropriate services, implement security and access controls, and establish the cost monitoring that prevents bill shock.
For businesses in the middle of a cloud migration — moving on-premise systems to cloud infrastructure — the strategic and technical decisions made during migration have long-term implications for performance, cost, and security. Getting a technology expert involved before the migration (not after things go wrong) is consistently the higher-value path.