Trends and Tools:

Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Tools like Terraform, Ansible, and CloudFormation automate infrastructure provisioning and management, enabling consistent environments across development, testing, and production.

Serverless Computing: Platforms like AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, and Azure Functions allow developers to deploy code without managing servers, automatically scaling resources based on demand.

Multi-Cloud Management: Tools like HashiCorp Consul and RightScale automate cloud resource management across multiple providers, optimizing costs and improving agility.

Applications:

Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): Automated pipelines for software development and deployment.
Backup and Recovery: Automated cloud-based backup solutions for data security and disaster recovery.
Cost Optimization: Automated resource scaling and cost management to optimize cloud spending.