Cloud computing provides various benefits over on-premise infrastructure including reduced costs by eliminating hardware expenses, increased speed and flexibility through self-service access to resources, global scale and elasticity in resource allocation, improved productivity by reducing management tasks, enhanced performance via worldwide networks of secure data centers, improved reliability through data redundancy, and strengthened security. The main types of cloud include public, private and hybrid models, while common services are Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Containers provide portability and agility for applications.