How cloud computing began, and who are some of the key players in the cloud computing industry?
Before the emergence of cloud computing, there used to be Client-Server computing, which is basically centralized storage hosting of all the software applications and storing the data on the server side. Now suppose any user wants to access specific data or run a program, they first need to connect to the server, gain appropriate access, and then perform the task.
Shortly after Client-Server computing, distributed computing came into existence, in which computers were networked together and shared their resources when needed. The concept of shared computing brought a revolution, and that revolution is what we are studying in this training; Cloud Computing.
Around 1961, John McCarthy, an American computer scientist, suggested that computing can be sold like a utility, just like water or electricity. It was a thoughtful idea, but it was ahead of its time like all brilliant ideas.
Time passed, and In 1999, Salesforce.com started delivering its application to users using a simple website. Customers were able to access the salesforce application over the Internet. This is the first time we saw the dream of computing being sold as a utility come true.
In 2002, Amazon started Amazon Web Services. It was a wing of amazon.com itself, but its purpose was to provide Amazon.com with the storage and computing services required to run the e-commerce website. After successfully using it for four years, in 2006, Amazon Web Services decided to sell computing as a service to the general public. That was the time when the public cloud first came into existence.
In 2009, Google started its Google Apps as Platform as a Service offering. By this time, all the big players began to enter the cloud computing evolution.
In the same year, Microsoft also launched Windows Azure, and after that other companies like Oracle and HP also joined the game.
So that’s how cloud computing started and these are the main players in the cloud computing market.
Check out our previous article on: Cloud Deployment models