delivery of on-demand computing services, such as servers, storage, databases, networking, and software, over the internet. Instead of owning and maintaining your own data centers and infrastructure, you rent these resources from a cloud provider on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Cloud computing isn't a new idea. Its core concepts, like resource sharing and virtualization, have been around before, but its modern form is unique because of features like on-demand self-service, rapid elasticity, and a pay-per-use model. You can get computing resources instantly, without human help. They can also scale up or down automatically to match demand. You only pay for what you use.
Media and Entertainment: Streaming services like Netflix and Spotify use the cloud to store vast libraries of content and deliver it to millions of users globally with low latency.
Healthcare: It facilitates telemedicine, remote patient monitoring, and the secure storage and analysis of large volumes of patient data, improving access to care and research.
E-commerce: Online retailers can easily scale their websites to handle massive traffic spikes during sales events without needing to invest in expensive, on-premises infrastructure.
The economic/business model of cloud computing is a shift from a Capital Expenditure (CapEx) model to an Operational Expenditure (OpEx) model. Instead of large, upfront investments in hardware and data centers (CapEx), businesses now have a variable, ongoing cost based on their usage (OpEx), known as the "pay-as-you-go" or "pay-per-use" model. This reduces financial risk, lowers barriers to entry for startups, and allows businesses to reallocate capital to other strategic initiatives.