Mental BoundCloud computing moves IT from capital-heavy owned hardware to elastic services you consume over the network. Public providers host shared infrastructure; you rent virtual machines, managed databases, object storage, and higher-level services such as serverless functions or managed Kubernetes. Private and hybrid models keep some workloads on premises while using the cloud for burst capacity or specific workloads.
The main benefit is agility: new environments in minutes, global regions for low latency, and automated scaling instead of manual capacity planning. Security and compliance remain your responsibility in the shared model — identity, encryption, network rules, and audit logging must be designed deliberately, not assumed from the vendor alone.
Choosing a cloud strategy means matching services to workload: lift-and-shift migrations, cloud-native rebuilds, or multi-cloud and edge combinations. Cost optimization (right-sizing, reserved capacity, shutting down idle resources) is ongoing work, not a one-time migration checkbox.