Cloud computing represents a delivery model offering extensively scalable, on-demand accessibility to computer resources, encompassing CPUs, storage, networking, and various hosted software services.

Clouds can be categorised as either public or private, with public clouds being more commonly associated with cloud computing. Platforms like AWS and Microsoft Azure, exemplify public clouds by pooling resources in distributed data centers globally, accessible to users over the internet. These resources are delivered to customers through metered services, with the cloud vendor managing varying degrees of back-end maintenance.

On the other hand, private clouds are isolated environments hosted within a corporate data center or a colocation facility. While lacking the expansive scale of public clouds, they exhibit some level of elasticity. Developers and administrators within a company can utilise self-service portals to access resources. In principle, private clouds offer increased control and security, although it is the responsibility of a company's IT team to ensure these attributes are maintained.

Cloud computing reduces IT operational expenses by entrusting the management of underlying infrastructure, encompassing both hardware and software, to the cloud provider. These managed components often exhibit greater reliability and security compared to traditional corporate data centers. This liberation allows IT teams to redirect their efforts towards tasks that directly contribute to the business.

Additionally, the cloud offers global reach, convenience, extensive scalability, and effortless accessibility. These attributes expedite the development and deployment of software applications. Cloud services expose organisations to a plethora of contemporary solutions that align with prevalent trends in application architectures and usage, such as microservices, containers, serverless computing, machine learning, large-scale data analytics, IoT, and more.