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Performance, functionality, and cost determine the competitiveness of CNC systems. These factors often conflict with each other. Cloud computing provides an enabling technology to meet the multidimensional challenges, potentially leading to CNC systems with both better performance and functionality, and lower cost. This article presents the architecture of a cloud-computing-based CNC system. This system locates its frontend in a cloud virtual machine and provides the frontend as a service. The frontend in cloud, otherwise known as a cloud-enabled frontend, remotely displays the interactive interface at a client device. The application program for interaction on the client is lightweight compared with the traditional CNC human machine interface and can be easily integrated into mobile devices, such as laptops. The cloud-enabled frontend communicates with an NC device (also known as the backend) on the shop floor via the Internet or an intranet. Only real-time tasks run on the backend, while other tasks (semi-real-time or non-real-time) are executed on the cloud-enabled frontend. Thus, the computing ability and intelligence of CNC systems can be improved by a switch to the cloud architecture. In the proposed solution, users can also launch third-party software (e.g. CAD, CAM, and CAE) on the cloud-enabled frontend, making it more versatile due to a rich application environment.