Clouds may be limited to a single organization (enterprise clouds,) be available to many organizations (public cloud,) or a combination of both (hybrid cloud.) The largest public cloud is Amazon AWS.Cloud computing relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economies of scale. Advocates of public and hybrid clouds note that cloud computing allow companies to avoid or minimize up-front IT infrastructure costs. Proponents also claim that cloud computing allows enterprises to get their applications up and running faster, with improved manageability and less maintenance, and that it enables IT teams to more rapidly adjust resources to meet fluctuating and unpredictable demand.

Cloud providers typically use a "pay-as-you-go" model, which can lead to unexpected operating expenses if administrators are not familiarized with cloud-pricing models. The availability of high-capacity networks, low-cost computers and storage devices as well as the widespread adoption of hardware virtualization, service-oriented architecture, and autonomic and utility computing has led to growth in cloud computing.