Cloud computing is reshaping how the world runs software — the global market is on track to approach $1 trillion in 2026 [1], powered by AI workloads, SaaS expansion, and enterprise digital transformation. Yet if you already deploy your apps on a DigitalOcean Droplet or a similar VPS, you might be asking: do I actually need to change anything? Here is an honest, practical answer.
What Is Cloud Computing? Cloud computing is the delivery of computing resources — servers, storage, databases, networking, software, and analytics — over the internet on a pay-as-you-go basis [1]. Rather than owning physical hardware, you rent capacity from a provider and access it from anywhere. The three dominant players are AWS (~33% market share), Microsoft Azure (~23%), and Google Cloud (~12%), collectively controlling more than 60% of the global cloud infrastructure market [3].