This document discusses traditional server concepts and their limitations including single points of failure, maintenance issues, and costs. It then introduces cloud computing as an alternative that offers advantages like reduced costs, improved scalability, flexibility and reliability through virtualization, resource pooling and other techniques. The key cloud service models - Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) - are explained along with common deployment models. Characteristics of cloud computing and examples of cloud platforms like Windows Azure are also summarized.