Ryan M. answered • 06/19/19
Experienced SQL, Reporting and Analytics Tutor
The cloud is anywhere online other than where you are right now. It's a fancy word for the Internet or a hosted environment. If you were at home and accessing a server that was hosted online for work, that server (and all the resources it supports) are in the cloud.
The term "cloud" has been associated with services such as AWS, Azure and other mainstream Software as a Service providers. It was popularized around 1996, but the "cloud" symbol has been around since 1977 and is synonymous with the Internet.
Cloud computing simply put, is when you are accessing a server (or resources) somewhere other than where you are locally. It's not a new concept, or even a new practice. In most cases when people say "cloud computing" today, they are probably referring to a person accessing on demand or managed resources provided by Amazon Web Services, Azure, Google, etc. But in reality anytime you access an environment online that is connected to the Internet, that's cloud computing.
