Past, Present And Future: Cloud Computing In Three Minutes
May 1, 2013
Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Jula Holkkola.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the cloud is just how fluffy it really is. Recent news indicates that it has finally gone mainsteam. Yet at the same time, most people are still not quite clear on what the cloud really is. To get a better understanding, here’s a three-minute summary of where the clouds came from and where they are heading.
Looking at the roots of the cloud computing movement, it all really started in the late ‘90s when companies with a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model started surfacing. Perhaps the most well known pioneer is Salesforce.com, the first billion-dollar company in the cloud space. Today there is a plethora of companies offering all kinds of online applications shared by the public. As a rule of thumb, if you could run something on your own computer but choose to tap into shared online resources instead, you are dealing with the cloud…
The second wave of cloud computing was kicked off in 2006 when Amazon launched Amazon Web Services. Within this new paradigm, if one needed something more than a shared online application someone else was running for you, it could be set up without having to invest in or run a physical machine. While engineers love complicated terms like Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), the only thing you really need to know about public, private or hybrid clouds is that it is very much like a vacation timeshare. Most of us spend only a week or two at the vacation destination, so why pick up the bill for the time you are not there? And the above-mentioned acronyms just describe the logistics…
Read more from the source @ http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2013/05/past-present-and-future-cloud-computing-in-three-minutes/