In this chapter, we introduced you to a few cloud computing concepts and terminologies. We described the basic features of public, private, and hybrid clouds. We introduced the main cloud delivery models, namely, IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. Finally, we listed the steps for creating your AWS account, and described the salient features of the AWS management console.

With the basics out of the way, in the next chapter we will deep dive into the details of how multitenanted cloud applications are different from traditional multi-tiered applications. We will also walk you through creating a sample application (using Spring and MySQL) that will be used to illustrate key cloud application design concepts through the rest of this book.