# Introduction

AWS CloudFormation gives you an easy way to model a collection of related AWS and third-party resources, provision them quickly and consistently, and manage them throughout their lifecycles, by treating infrastructure as code. A CloudFormation template describes your desired resources and their dependencies so you can launch and configure them together as a stack. You can use a template to create, update, and delete an entire stack as a single unit, as often as you need to, instead of managing resources individually. You can manage and provision stacks across multiple AWS accounts and AWS Regions.

## Benefits

#### Automate best practices <a href="#automate_best_practices" id="automate_best_practices"></a>

With CloudFormation, you can apply DevOps and GitOps best practices using widely adopted processes such as starting with a git repository and deploying through a CI/CD pipeline. You can also simplify auditing changes and trigger automated deployments with pipeline integrations such as GitHub Actions and AWS CodePipeline.

#### Scale your infrastructure worldwide <a href="#scale_your_infrastructure_worldwide" id="scale_your_infrastructure_worldwide"></a>

Manage resource scaling by sharing CloudFormation templates to be used across your organization, to meet safety, compliance, and configuration standards across all AWS accounts and regions. Templates and parameters enable easy scaling so you can share best practices and company policies. Additionally, CloudFormation StackSets enables you to create, update, or delete stacks across multiple AWS accounts and regions, with a single operation.

#### Integrate with other AWS services <a href="#integrate_with_other_aws_services" id="integrate_with_other_aws_services"></a>

To further automate resource management across your organization, you can integrate CloudFormation with other AWS services, including AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for access control, AWS Config for compliance, and AWS Service Catalog for turnkey application distribution and additional governance controls. Integrations with CodePipeline and other builder tools let you implement the latest DevOps best practices and improve automation, testing, and controls.

### How it works <a href="#how_it_works" id="how_it_works"></a>

![](https://1098627933-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-MJLSyDhjobJQWwESFD5%2F-MKWRWobMYc23PKQzYmn%2F-MKWTWhy3vj2aC9lnsE6%2Fimage.png?alt=media\&token=d11e169b-4771-40e5-a735-8097dbe7fd30)
