Virtual Private Cloud - An isolated, private network within a public cloud provider where you control IP addressing, subnets, routing, and security. Available as AWS VPC, Azure Virtual Network (VNet), Google Cloud VPC Network, and Oracle Cloud VCN. Like having your own secure, private neighborhood within a large city.
A financial services company creates a VPC with public subnets for web servers and private subnets for databases, using security groups to control traffic between tiers.
All four provide a logically isolated virtual network where you define IP ranges, subnets, routes, and security controls. Key differences: AWS/Azure/OCI scope VPC/VNet/VCN to a region (with subnets in availability zones), while Google Cloud VPC is global (subnets are regional). Security controls also differ: AWS uses Security Groups and NACLs, Azure uses NSGs and route tables, GCP uses VPC firewall rules and routes, and OCI uses Security Lists/NSGs and route tables.