Book excerpt: This IBM® RedpaperTM publication introduces you to IBM Cloud Provisioning and Management for z/OS®. The paper was written to coincide with the announcement of IBM Cloud Provisioning and Management for z/OS and the software is not yet generally available (GA) at the time of this writing. As such, any examples that are shown are subject to change at any time before the software is GA. The goal of this paper is to provide you with an initial overview and more information to support the announcement. You might be new to clouds, or heard of many different variations of what a cloud might be. Therefore, it is useful to begin with establishing an understanding of cloud computing concepts. The paper describes the provisioning and management of z/OS middleware and explains how these aspects can be offered as a cloud service.