[Pharaoh2]

Except that it is not. It redundant array of computers, if one goes down, another takes it place and all the apps running on it are migrated to the new hardware. And if the whole zone goes down, the apps are migrated to a different zone. If the whole region goes down, the apps can be migrated to a different region. The 9s are so high that you don't have to worry about hardware issues anymore, unlike when you are running your own hardware.

[bkeroack]

That's the theory (or the marketing pitch, depending upon perspective).

The reality can be rather different[1][2][3].

1. http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/21/technology/amazon_server_out...

2. http://www.zdnet.com/article/amazon-web-services-suffers-out...

3. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/20/aws_database_outage/

[gregmac]

Or it could be literally an old desktop computer sitting in someone's damp basement on a DSL connection. The problem with just saying "the cloud" is you can't tell the difference.

[Pharaoh2]

Generally when people say the cloud, they mean one of the big Public/Private cloud providers, not someone's basement.