The evolution of cloud computing

The history of the Internet regularly converges with the history of cloud computing. The two are mutually dependent and inseparable. The evolution of one facilitates the birth and operation of the other. We have put together some of the key events and people involved in this evolution. The timeline could be far more extensive, but with these little snippets we have plenty to learn about cloud past and present.

1950 – Herb Grosch hypothesises that the whole world could function with 15 large-scale data centres and hundred of connected terminals. This establishes the origins of the Internet and the pre-history of cloud computing.

1961 –- John McCarthy puts forward the concept of cloud computing by publically suggesting that advances in computer and communications technology will lead to “one day computing being organised like a public service”, as is the case with water or electricity.

1966 – Douglas Parkhill writes the book “The Challenge of the Computer Utility“, which establishes nearly all the modern characteristics of cloud computing, and talks about its potential as a public service.

1969 – JCR Licklider begins to introduce the idea of “intergalactic computing networks” with the hope that one day the whole world can access this kind of program.

1969 –- The US Department of Defence develops ARPANET, the first computer network used as a means of communication for the different bodies of the country. The development of the Internet is key for the subsequent appearance of cloud computing that offers network-based services.

1983 –- ARPANET changes NCP protocol for TCP/IP. This protocol becomes standard and introduces the concept of a World Wide Web of interconnected networks.

1989 – The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) creates Europe’s largest Internet node and Tim Berners-Lee sees the opportunity to fuse the Internet and the hypertext (HTTP and HTML).

1997 –- Ramnath Chellappa coins the term ‘cloud computing’ and defines it as a new “computing paradigm where the boundaries of computing will be determined by economic rationale rather than technical limits alone”.

1999 –- Software as a Service (SaaS) is offered for the first time. The service provider makes its own software available for clients, removing the need to keep software updated or to purchase licences.

2000 – Amazon plays a key role in the development of cloud computing through the modernisation of its data centres and the development of products to offer cloud services to external clients.

2002 –- Blackberry introduces the first telephone with voice, data, messages, browser and applications, becoming the first smartphone. Users can now access the Internet from their mobile device.

2002 – Masvoz is founded, with the aim of marketing intelligent network services for companies. It becomes an operator a few years later and develops a comprehensive platform of advanced cloud-based intelligent telephony products, marketed in a SaaS (Software as a Service) and pay-per-use model.

2006 –- George Gilder immortalises the cloud architecture model in a Wired article titled “The information factories. The server farms.”

2007 – Google, IBM and several North American universities embark on a large-scale cloud computing research project. A year later, Eucalyptus appears, the first open code AWS API platform allowing the creation of cloud systems compatible with Amazon web services. This facilitated the deployment of private clouds.

2010 –- Cloud continues to grow and i-services companies need to meet mobile and tablet consumer needs. “As a Service” proliferates with cloud apps hosted in distant data centres.

2011 –- The consultant Gartner predicts that in 2012, 80% of the Fortune 1000 large companies will use a Cloud-type service. It also announces that cloud sector revenue will reach $148.8 billion in 2014.

2014 –- Numerous studies collected in the Cloud Computing online magazine reveal that security and privacy in cloud computing continue to be the issues of greatest concern to users.

2014 –- The cloud federation model begins to take shape. This option involves using orchestration software to build and manage different public cloud resources, exploiting all their potential.