The Evolution of Cloud Computing
Cloud computing …. Do people really know what this infamous IT game changer, “The Cloud” really is? (Hint: it’s not those white puffy things in the sky) Cloud Computing is one of the fastest emerging trends in the technological realm. It has made its way in the Internet Technology space and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, anytime soon.
What is the cloud exactly? Well to put it in shorter terms, the cloud is a network of servers that holds your digital data from documents to music. Your information is then stored on an external network of servers and accessed via the web. Cloud computing has a significant potential impact on every aspect of IT and how users access applications, information and business services.
Now that we are more informed of just what the Cloud is, let’s learn a little more about its timeline from its inception.
1969
- J.C.R. Licklider enabled the development of ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network)
- Computer Scientist, John McCarthy also assisted with the idea of computation being delivered as a public utility.
1970
- IBM released an operating system known as VM (Virtual Machine), which allowed different administrators to have multiple virtual systems on a single physical node.
1990’s
- The Web 2.0 evolution began and Cloud Computing started as an idea, which then became a reality with the increase of bandwidth.
1999
- Salesforce.com came into play and delivered enterprise application by way of a web portal. Then making the ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) able to deliver applications over the Internet.
2000’s
- The usage of the Cloud started to stand out in the 2000’s. Companies such as IBM and Oracle became popular due to services such as, Infrastructure as a service, Platform as a service and Software as a service offered to different businesses.
- Apple’s iCloud, Dropbox and Google Apps set off a major rise in consumer use.
2002
- Amazon Web Services via Amazon Mechanical Turk, began to provide cloud-based services such as: storage, computation and human intelligence.
2006
- Amazon then launched Ec2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) which allowed small companies and individuals to rent computers to run their own computer applications.
2009
- Web 2.0 was consistently successful.
- Google and others began to offer browser-based enterprise applications, through services like Google Apps.
2015
- Popular apps, growing bandwidth and the development of Virtual Technology grew the presence of Cloud Computing.
The Cloud today and in the Future
Forbes recently reported that 90% of all worldwide mobile traffic with be from Cloud applications by 2019.