Heroku is an application platform that allows developers to build, run, and operate applications entirely in the cloud. The document provides an overview of building a simple Flask application on Heroku, including installing the Heroku Toolbelt, creating a virtual environment, writing code, committing to Git, and deploying the application to Heroku. It also covers key Heroku concepts like the Twelve-Factor App methodology, configuring variables, managing releases, adding addons like Redis, scaling dynos, and viewing logs and metrics.