Explain "The Cloud" like I'm 5

5 yr Child: Explain cloud to me like I am 5 yrs old.
Me: but you are 5 yrs old ;)
Me: Ok! Using someone else's toys to store data for your own toys.
Child: But what is data?
Me: Data is what makes your toy do things like- dance, clap, sing or hack another toys.
Child: That makes sense

P.S- there are no clouds. Just someone else's computer.

When you eat ice cream at home you only have a few flavors and it runs out if lots of your friends share it.

When you go to the ice cream shop you can pick from lots of flavors and cones and toppings, you can buy one little cup for a dollar but it doesn't run out even if all your friends want more!

The ice cream shop is the Cloud. Your home freezer is local.

You know how sometimes your favorite electronic toys wear out or break or just don't do what you want anymore? And then when that happens, you have to wait to go to the store to get a new one or a better one?

Cloud services are great because you can buy new toys or upgraded toys and start using them instantly without even having to ask anyone, and the best part is that while you're using it, someone else's job is to keep it safe from getting taken and to automatically replace it if it breaks when you don't notice.

Renting time on someone else's computers, their super-fast internet access and their expertise in keeping it working.

In our backyard, we have a little swing, a small slide and only a small sandbox. And if some of them get wet or dirty or break, we need to clean or fix them ourselves.

Over at the large theme park called "The Cloud", there are rollercoasters, water rides, an tons of other stuff to play with. Some rides are entirely free, for some we need to pay. But if something is broken it'll be fixed immediately by the park maintenance without extra cost for us

Remember you left your toy at grandma's?
Well grandma's place is like "the cloud"
Your toy is not lost but stored save by grandpa somewhere.
(grandpa makes sure nobody else can play with it)
If we need it, we can get it anytime.
Getting it is not as fast as getting it from your room, but we can get it anytime.
(because I have the key to their house)

when the sun heats the surface of the earth, the water gets hot and make some fog, ad this fog goes to the heaven and creates the clouds hehehehe #joking

the cloud is merely the same tech as we had since the begining! what I mean is that you still have a tons of bare metal servers and sysadmins jumping around on servers, support people solving problems, and some random dude doing some cables to make this goes to there.
the main difference is the business model, and the automation of big part of the work. you don't need a sysadmin to create more servers to you. you could do this by yourself or your system could scale horizontally and/ or vertically when your application needs it. in short terms "the cloud" is just a fancy name to self-service/ automatic jobs.

Someone else’s computers

You pay to get access to someones computer that has programs on it that make it easier to make your program. 🤷‍♂

someone else's computer.

Files are the drops in the clouds 🤓

Two or more Datacenters connected together.

Just like Real Cloud but instead of water its made-up of DATA and Services.

The cloud is like an indoor jungle gym/soft play.

It's got all the latest toys, you can play with whatever you like, and if something is broken, it will get magically fixed for next time!