Cloud is a buzzword that has been bandied about the technology industry for the last few years, but what exactly does this mean. What does cloud mean for the people working in IT departments around the world? How will cloud affect the way you do your job, how you work, and what type of work you do? I guess these are questions that are yet to be answered fully, but in this book, we will try and give some meaning to the term cloud from a technology perspective, and then we will spend some time to take a look at the Microsoft's Azure cloud offering, and discuss some of the services you can get from Microsoft's cloud.

This chapter is intended to provide a grounding in some of the terminology associated with cloud computing, and then we will take a look at what we need to do in order to be able to work with Microsoft Azure and the services that Microsoft offers through this platform.

In this chapter, you will learn the following topics: