Vaadin is a UI framework for building rich web applications in Java. It allows developers to build applications like traditional desktop frameworks by treating web apps as client-server architectures where the user interface runs on the client-side but the application logic and data binding runs on the server. Vaadin handles all client-server communication seamlessly through AJAX requests so developers can focus on the application logic without having to work with HTML, JavaScript, or browser plugins. It includes over 100 reusable UI components and supports binding to various data sources and deployment on most application servers and clouds.