This document discusses definitions and concepts related to cloud computing. It begins by looking at definitions from NIST and WhatIs.com, which describe cloud computing as enabling on-demand access to configurable computing resources via a network. The document then covers central ideas like utility computing, service-oriented architecture (SOA), and service level agreements (SLAs). It discusses properties and characteristics of clouds like scalability, availability, reliability, manageability, interoperability, performance, and accessibility. Finally, it delves into concepts that enable these properties, such as virtualization, parallel computing, load balancing, fault tolerance, and system monitoring.