February 9, 2011

A History of Cloud Computing

By Sourya Biswas

History of Cloud Computing

What is cloud computing? History, especially if it deals with victories and defeats, is inherently flawed. No one knew this better than Winston Churchill, who was assured of his place in the historical tomes by his victory in WWII. As he put it, “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it”. Therefore, are we taking a leap of faith by trying to encapsulate the history of cloud computing technology in mere words? Is it a wasted effort?

Not really. In our opinion, the best time to trace the growth of any paradigm, whether technology or culture or any other human endeavor, is when it has grown out of infancy but not attained maturity. For it is then that prejudices will not be able to color our opinions, whether positive or negative.

Fog Computing The Historty of cloud computing

Since cloud computing is gaining acceptability by the day, it is no longer a beginner in the IT infrastructure space. Again, since there are many who resist the technology citing several concerns like security and availability, it hasn’t matured either. In other words, there’s no time like the present in presenting its history.

The general idea behind the technology dates back to the 1960s, when John McCarthy wrote that “computation may someday be organized as a public utility.” Then, grid computing, a concept that originated in the early 1990s as an idea for making computer power as easy to access as an electric power grid also contributed to cloud computing. For a detailed look at the differences between utility, grid and cloud computing, look at “Cloud Computing vs Utility Computing vs Grid Computing: Sorting The Differences.”

The term “cloud computing” was most probably derived from the diagrams of clouds used to represent the Internet in textbooks. The concept was derived from telecommunications companies who made a radical shift from point-to-point data circuits to Virtual Private Network (VPN) services in the 1990s. By optimizing resource utilization through load balancing, they could get their work done more efficiently and inexpensively. The first time the term was used in its current context was in a 1997 lecture by Ramnath Chellappa where he defined it as a new “computing paradigm where the boundaries of computing will be determined by economic rationale rather than technical limits alone.”

One of the first movers in cloud computing was Salesforce.com, which in 1999 introduced the concept of delivering enterprise applications via a simple website. Amazon was next on the bandwagon, launching Amazon Web Service in 2002. Then came Google Docs in 2006 which really brought cloud computing to the forefront of public consciousness. 2006 also saw the introduction of Amazon’s Elastic Compute cloud (EC2) as a commercial web service that allowed small companies and individuals to rent computers on which to run their own computer applications.

This was soon followed by an industry-wide collaboration in 2007 between Google, IBM and a number of universities across the United States. Next came Eucalyptus in 2008, the first open source AWS API compatible platform for deploying private clouds, followed by OpenNebula, the first open source software for deploying private and hybrid clouds.

2009 saw Microsoft’s entry into cloud computing with the launch of Windows Azure in November. Now, suddenly, there were major players jumping on to cloud computing from left, right and center.

While 2010 saw the maximum number of companies entering this space, 2011 is expected to be even more eventful.

By Sourya Biswas

Sourya Biswas

Principal Security Consultant at NCC Group

13+ years of experience in Client Engagement, Business Development, Project Management and Management Consulting in the Information Security & Risk Management and IT Strategy domains.

250+ articles on Cloud Computing, technical editor of a reputed textbook.

MBA (double major in Consulting & Business Leadership) on full scholarship from Notre Dame, Bachelor's engineering degree in Information Technology from a top 10 engineering institute in India.

Professional certifications include the CISSP, CISM, PMP, PSM and several ITIL Intermediates.
Lex Hegt

How Can Organizations Effectively Monitor and Analyze Their Azure Billing Data?

Monitor and Analyze Azure Billing Data With the ever-increasing investments in Azure, many organizations struggle [...]
Read more
Stacey Farrar

Embracing Governance to Navigate 2024’s Tech Trends

Mastering Governance Strategies for Success The start of a new year is a fitting time [...]
Read more
Anastasios Arampatzis

Insider Threats: The Trojan Horses in Intellectual Property Theft

The Invisible Enemy In the rapidly evolving landscape of global business, intellectual property (IP) stands [...]
Read more
Steve Prentice

Episode 20: Why inbound telephone calls are still vital to your business

A conversation with David Anandraj, manager of Product Management for the ecommerce segment of BCM [...]
Read more
Veljko

5 Recruiting Software Tools For Technology And Digital Companies

5 Recruiting Software Tools Finding the best candidate in the sea of thousands of developers [...]
Read more
Jeremy Smillie

Securing the Future: Insights from DevSecOps Expert, Jeremy Smillie

Welcome to another insightful discussion on CloudTweaks. Today, we have the privilege of delving into [...]
Read more

SPONSOR PARTNER

Explore top-tier education with exclusive savings on online courses from MIT, Oxford, and Harvard through our e-learning sponsor. Elevate your career with world-class knowledge. Start now!
© 2024 CloudTweaks. All rights reserved.