What is Cloud Hosting?

Cloud Hosting is the hosting
of a website based on a
"Divide and Rule" concept -
the website is hosted on
multiple connected servers
allowing the resources required for maintaining
the website to be spread across those servers,
and rendered on a per need basis.
In traditional shared or dedicated hosting environments,
your website is limited to a single physical server and
relies on the resources of just one server. This setup comes with potential problems: 1) your website outgrows the server's capacity (ie. peak load) and/or 2) the server crashes. In both cases, your website will become inaccessible leaving your visitors stranded.
With cloud hosting, your website is hosted on multiple connected servers. This architecture provides increased power, availability and reliability to handle any load size or demand, and at the same time, allows websites to grow without the normal hardware restrictions of one single physical server.
The easiest way to understand this concept is to look at one of its biggest promoters: Google. You may not remember the last time Gmail was down. This is because Gmail, and other Google operations, has its resources spread over hundreds of servers on the cloud. This massive infrastructure allows people to access their Gmail accounts from all over the world at the same time without putting stress on the website.