What is cloud computing?

Computing delivered over the internet as an on-demand, shared pool of resources — the official NIST definition.

What it means

Cloud computing is, in the authoritative NIST definition, "a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction."

In plain terms: instead of buying and running your own servers, you rent computing from a provider (such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud) and pay for what you use. That shift is why cloud roles (cloud support, cloud engineer) and cloud certifications exist.

This is a definitional explainer; it is not advice about which platform to learn or a claim about any job outcome.

Sources

• National Institute of Standards and Technology — The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing (SP 800-145): https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/145/final

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