Definition
Cloud providers (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure) offer virtual machines, object storage, databases, and ML APIs on demand — pay for what you use, scale up or down quickly.
IaaS gives raw VMs; PaaS and serverless abstract more of the infrastructure.
In simple terms
Cloud computing is utilities — you plug into electricity and water instead of running your own power plant and well.
Where you see it
- Websites hosted on AWS or Vercel.
- GPU instances for training and inference.
- S3 stores datasets and model artifacts.
How it works
1.Provision resources
Create VMs, buckets, or managed DBs via console or IaC.
2.Deploy apps
Containers, serverless functions, or static sites.
3.Monitor and scale
Autoscaling groups and billing alerts.
Why it matters
- Most AI products run in the cloud — understanding it is part of modern engineering literacy.
Often confused
The cloud is just someone else's computer.
True at hardware level, but managed services (DB, queue, ML API) add value beyond raw VMs.