Combining with the emerged information technologies such as cloud computing, the internet of things, service-oriented technologies, high performance computing (HPC), a new manufacturing paradigm—cloud manufacturing (CMfg) for solving the bottlenecks in the informatization development and manufacturing applications is proposed.The concept of cloud manufacturing, including the abstract principle model, operational mode, difference with cloud computing, and the typical characteristics of cloud manufacturing, is studied.A service-oriented layered architecture for cloud manufacturing system is discussed.The running and application models of cloud manufacturing are investigated, and the key technologies for implementing a cloud manufacturing service platform is proposed.Finally, the preliminary results conducted by the authors group on cloud manufacturing are briefly introduced.