The provision of computational resources on demand via a network. Cloud computing can be compared to the supply of electricity and gas or the provision of telephone, television, and postal services. All of these services are presented to users in a simple way that is easy to understand without users’ needing to know how the services are provided. This simplified view is called an abstraction. Similarly, cloud computing offers computer application developers and users an abstract view of services, which simplifies and ignores much of the details and inner workings. A provider’s offering of abstracted Internet services is often called the cloud.
