Cloud Computing refers to both the applications delivered as services over the Internet and the hardware and systems software in the data centers that provide those services. A cloud computing platform dynamically provisions, configures, reconfigures, and deprovisions servers as needed. Cloud applications are those that are extended to be accessible through the Internet. The datacenter hardware and software is what we will call a Cloud. Cloud computing is changing the way we provision hardware and software for on-demand capacity fulfillment and changing the way we develop web applications and make business decisions. Definition: Cloud computing is a computing paradigm in which tasks are assigned to a combination of connections, software and services accessed over a network. This network of servers and connections is collectively known as "the cloud." Computing at the scale of the cloud allows users to access supercomputer-level power. Users can access resources as they need them.
Cloud computing describes how computer programs are hosted and operated over the Internet. The key feature of cloud computing is that both the software and the information held in it live on centrally located servers rather than on an end-user's computer. How does cloud computing
works? The concept is fairly simple. First, consider the traditional means of running application: and application appears to run on a dumb terminal or, these days your PC; practicality, this is only front-end of the application. Your computer is connected to a server that actually runs the
program or application and returns information to your personal computer. The server constitutes the backend and it can be located in the same building as you are or not. With cloud computing application program runs somewhere within the cloud; ideally the user concern only with applications that are available and need not to be aware of the underlying technology or the physical location of the Application's computer. User desktop is connected via internet to a server farm, a collection of remote servers that runs many, many applications at once. Which server or servers an application runs on is determined by the pplication program already running on the machines; there IS an attempt to balance the load so that all of the programs run optimally.
