Cloud computing refers to a broad spectrum of situations, ranging from renting raw hardware which you access through a network enabled console to simply writing

Cloud computing refers to a broad spectrum of situations, ranging from renting raw hardware which you access through a network enabled console to simply writing functions to be deployed on demand and many steps in between the two extremes. For me the biggest Pro: is that I can rent machines, connected to the internet where I have total freedom on how powerful the machine is and for how long. For example, I can rent a low performance system for continuous internet access, and/or a very high performance system only for a few hours to get a critical task completed. There are also several Cons: Data ingress and egress charges become considerable if you are moving a lot of data. You are using other people's hardware and infrastructure, thus you do pay a substantial margin over the cost. Your data can become inaccessible and might be less secure. As with every engineering situation, you need to understand your requirements and then weigh up the pros and cons to arrive at the optimal solution to any given problem. For example, if you don't have the technical know-how to setup and administer servers connected to the internet, then having it all done for you is a huge saving in time and effort. The incremental cost being far less than the alternatives. Another example, if you need to process large quantities of confidential data on a regular basis, then having a suitable in-house computer system is likely to be a more secure and lower cost approach.