Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform, back-end JavaScript runtime environment that runs on a JavaScript Engine (i.e. V8 engine) and executes JavaScript code outside a web browser, which was designed to build scalable network applications.

There are thousands of open-source libraries for Node.js, most of them hosted on the npm website. There are multiple developer conferences and events that support the Node.js community, including NodeConf, Node Interactive, and Node Summit as well as a number of regional events.

New major releases of Node.js are cut from the GitHub master branch every six months. Even-numbered versions are cut in April and odd-numbered versions are cut in October. When a new odd version is released, the previous even version undergoes transition to Long Term Support (LTS).

Node.js is supported across a number of cloud-hosting platforms like Jelastic, Google Cloud Platform, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Joyent and others.