What problems does it solve?

The biggest benefit of the cloud is it allows organizations to expand without a large capital cost, and also allows new/small businesses to shrink their startup or capital into a pay-as-you-go model. The cloud allows for innovation to happen without the traditional fears of infrastructure purchases, giving the ability to bring up and tear down in a rapid and cost effective way with little concern for the infrastructure needed.

Think of it as an unlimited playground where the only true limit is your imagination. You can now build, migrate, or rebuild your applications, so you truly only have to worry about the application and not about everything around it. So, the problem it solves is allowing your organization to scale faster, while controlling cost and offline responsibilities to help streamline IT operations.

The cloud targets not only development but operational resources, allowing you to focus on the things that truly matter to an organization. It fosters increased communication between all facets of the organization, from requirement gathering to automated deployment and testing. Let’s take a look at Microsoft’s cloud solution, Azure.