butterfly/kb
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull Requests Actions Packages Projects Releases Wiki Activity
a246fdfd34
kb/data/developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Cloud_computing-0.md

12 KiB
Raw Blame History

title chunk source category tags date_saved instance
Cloud computing - Glossary | MDN 1/3 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Cloud_computing reference web, html, css, javascript, documentation 2026-05-05T05:27:45.606996+00:00 kb-cron

MDN HTML HTML: Markup language

HTML reference

HTML guides

Markup languages

CSS CSS: Styling language

CSS reference

CSS guides

Layout cookbook

JavaScriptJS JavaScript: Scripting language

JS reference

JS guides

Web APIs Web APIs: Programming interfaces

Web API reference

Web API guides

All All web technology

Technologies

Topics

Learn Learn web development

Frontend developer course

Learn HTML

Learn CSS

Learn JavaScript

Tools Discover our tools

About Get to know MDN better

Blog

  1. Glossary
  2. Cloud computing

Cloud computing

Cloud computing refers to the on-demand delivery of a wide range of computing services such as storage, databases, networking, analytics, and intelligence via the Internet — also known as cloud services. Cloud services are infrastructure, platforms, or software made available to users via the internet, hosted by third-party providers such as Google (Google Cloud Platform), Amazon AWS (Amazon Web Services), and Microsoft (Azure). Users can access cloud services through a pay-as-you-go pricing model, ensuring they only pay for what they use, and without requiring any complex software set up on their own computers. This model enables faster innovation, flexible scalability, and significant cost savings. The three main types of cloud computing are Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Each type of cloud computing provides different levels of control, flexibility, and management.

Infrastructure as a Service

IaaS provides virtualized computing resources over the internet, including servers, storage, and networking, allowing users to manage their infrastructure. This gives users a high level of flexibility and control over the resources. Companies using IaaS can scale their server infrastructure rapidly without owning physical servers. Examples include Amazon Web Services (AWS EC2), Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines, and Google Compute Engine (GCE).

Platform as a Service

PaaS provides a platform allowing customers to develop, run, and manage applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure such as servers, storage, and networking. PaaS allows developers to focus on writing code and application logic, without managing servers or operating systems. Examples include Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure App Service, Heroku, and AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

Software as a Service

SaaS delivers software applications over the internet, which users can access via a web browser. The provider manages all the underlying infrastructure, platform, and data. Businesses using SaaS don't need to install or manage software locally. Instead, they can access software such as email, CRM, and collaboration tools directly from a web browser. Examples include Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack, GitHub, and ChatGPT.

In this article

See also