Amazon Elastic Beanstalk is more than just a new product from Amazon.com. It’s validation that raw IaaS is too complex for the average development shop and that PaaS is the inevitable web app model for the future.

Cloud computing is all the rage (and hype). In the past few weeks, many of our readers have sent us feedback asking for some basic information about cloud computing for newbies. We aim to please. So this post familiarizes you with some basic terms and concepts surrounding cloud computing, including cloud models such as public, private, and hybrid clouds, as well as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS).