The word “cloud” is derived from the figure of a cloud which is used to represent the internet connection between the service provider and the end user. The evolution or history of cloud computing can be traced to early 1990s and underwent many changes since. The basis of cloud computing is the Internet. Let us observe the evolving stages of cloud computing since 1990s.
Developments that took place in early 1990s (1990-1995)
- Many telecommunications companies started providing the point-to point services to its users during this stage. But this point-to-point services are limited. They are offered only to the particular users.
- By the mid 1990s the technology has further improved and telecommunications companies started building Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), to offer the best service within the budget and with more efficiency.
Developments that took place in late 1990s (1996-1999)
- During middle and later 1990s, the Internet became more popular. This period can be called a new era in computing world.
- The Internet became a basis for an idea of cloud computing.
- Many companies started understanding the benefits of cloud computing and many started using cloud computing.
- The biggest turning point in the history of cloud computing is the launching of Salesforce.com in 1999. Salesforce.com is a business application which covers all the areas of the business. It started offering services to the subscribed customers via the Internet. Some of its services are free while some are paid.
Developments that took place in early 2000s (2000-2005)
- After the success of Salesforce.com, many companies tried to use cloud computing to provide solutions to the business and services to the customers.
- Amazon is the next company to utilize the cloud computing for the growth of its business. It launched Amazon Web Services in 2002. Amazon Web Services provides a small storage and computing services to the customers.
Developments that took place in late 2000s (2006-2009)
- Cloud computing was well known to the people and became popular in this period.
- By mid-2000s, there are some companies who have deployed their services on cloud and started serving the users. Users found cloud services easy and cheaper than the normal software and the popularity of cloud computing was further increased.
- In 2006, Amazon launched its first cloud as Elastic Compute Cloud, popularly known as EC2 and Simple Storage Service (S3). EC2 is a server or an environment where users can request for service to run and execute the developed applications. This comes under IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) category. S3 is a storage service to store files, images, documents etc.
- The number of Amazon’s EC2/S3 subscribers peaked 2007-8.
- In this period, Google launched Google docs services. These services helped share documents among the end users.
Now, there are many services deployed by many companies to the cloud and are widely used by many individuals and organizations.
