Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services over the internet by a cloud provider. The services range from databases to networking to data storage.

YouTube is an example of a cloud-computing based product. Our phone or laptop can’t store every video that we can watch on YouTube in its memory. But YouTube has the resources to store all those videos for us. Our devices request the cloud storage services of YouTube, which streams its data back to our device.

The cloud is not one computer at any particular location. Any set of servers dedicated to providing services to other computers is its own cloud. When we say “the cloud,” we refer to many different clouds owned by many different companies. Companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft provide large public clouds accessible to anyone. Thousands of small businesses also host small private clouds accessible only to their employees.