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The concept of thecloud computing as a platform fordistributed computing traces its roots back to 1993. At that time,Apple spin-offGeneral Magic andAT&T utilized the term in the context of theirTelescript and Personal Link technologies.[1]
In an April 1994 feature byWired, titled "Bill and Andy's Excellent Adventure II",Andy Hertzfeld elaborated on Telescript, General Magic's distributed programming language. He described the expansive potential of the cloud:
The beauty of Telescript ... is that now, instead of just having a device to program, we now have the entire Cloud out there, where a single program can go and travel to many different sources of information and create a sort of a virtual service. No one had conceived that before. The example Jim White [the designer of Telescript,X.400 andASN.1] uses now is a date-arranging service where a software agent goes to the flower store and orders flowers and then goes to the ticket shop and gets the tickets for the show, and everything is communicated to both parties.[2]
In 1963, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) fundedProject MAC, the first computer time-sharing system.[3] During the 1960s, the initial concepts oftime-sharing became popularized viaRemote Job Entry (RJE);[4] this terminology was mostly associated with large vendors such asIBM andDEC. Full-time-sharing solutions were available by the early 1970s on such platforms asMultics (on GE hardware), Cambridge CTSS, and the earliestUNIX ports (on DEC hardware). Yet, the "data center" model where users submitted jobs tooperators to run on IBM mainframes was overwhelmingly predominant.
In the late 1980s, the invention of the world wide web led to internet expansion and on-premises data centers.[5] In the 1990s,telecommunications companies, who previously offered primarily dedicated point-to-point data circuits, began offeringvirtual private network (VPN) services with comparable quality of service, but at a lower cost. By switching traffic as they saw fit to balance server use, they could use overall network bandwidth more effectively.[6] They began to use the cloud symbol to denote the demarcation point between what the provider was responsible for and what users were responsible for. Cloud computing extended this boundary to cover all servers as well as thenetwork infrastructure.[7] As computers became more diffused, scientists and technologists explored ways to make large-scale computing power available to more users through time-sharing.[6] They experimented withalgorithms to optimize the infrastructure, platform, and applications, to prioritize tasks to be executed byCPUs, and to increase efficiency for end users.[8] At the same time,Application Service Providers became popular, and later evolved intoSoftware as a Service (SaaS).[9] In 1999,Medidata launched Rave, the first electronic data capture software for clinical data.[10]
The use of the cloud metaphor for virtualized services dates at least toGeneral Magic in 1994, where it was used to describe the universe of "places" thatmobile agents in theTelescript environment could go. As described byAndy Hertzfeld:
"The beauty ofTelescript," saysAndy, "is that now, instead of just having a device to program, we now have the entire Cloud out there, where a single program can go and travel to many different sources of information and create a sort of a virtual service."[11]
The use of the cloud metaphor is credited to General Magic communications employeeDavid Hoffman, based on long-standing use in networking and telecom. In addition to use by General Magic itself, it was also used in promotingAT&T's associated Personal Link Services.[12]
In the 2000s,Service-oriented architecture (SOA) andweb service frameworks popularized loose coupling, coarse-grained capabilities, and composable services, concepts that later led to and merged with the cloud computing service-delivery models.[13][14] In parallel,Software as a service (SaaS) emerged as an approach to delivering applications over the Internet rather than via local or on-premise installation.[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]
In 2002,Amazon established its subsidiaryAmazon Web Services, which allows developers to build applications independently.[22][23]
In 2006, Amazon introducedSimple Storage Service (S3) in March andElastic Compute Cloud (EC2) in August. These services were among the first to useserver virtualization to provideIaaS on a pay-as-you-go basis. In the same year, Google launchedGoogle Docs, a SaaS model to edit and save documents online.
In 2007,Netflix launches its online video streaming service, the first SaaS streaming site.[24] Also, IBM and Google partnered with universities-- University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, Stanford, University of Maryland, and UC Berkeley-- to create a research server farm.[25] This would later become theCluster Exploratory program when the National Science Foundation funded the project in early 2008.[26]
In April of 2008,Google released the beta version ofGoogle App Engine, aPaaS that provides a fully managed infrastructure and platform for users to create web applications.[27][28] In mid-2018,Gartner noted the potential for cloud computing to reshape the relationship between IT service consumers, users, and providers.[29]
NASA'sNebula becomes the firstopen-source software for deploying private and hybrid clouds in early 2009.[30] Later in the same year, The French government announced the Andromède Project to establish a national cloud computing service. The government committed €285 million to the initiative.[31][32] The initiative ultimately failed, leading to the shutdown ofCloudwatt on 1 February 2020.[33][34]
In February 2010,Microsoft launchedMicrosoft Azure in February, following its announcement in October 2008.[35] Five months later,Rackspace Hosting andNASA initiated anopen-source cloud-software project,OpenStack. This project aimed to facilitate organizations in offering cloud-computing services on standard hardware. The early codebase was sourced from NASA'sNebula platform andRackspace's Cloud Files platform.[36][37]
In March of 2011, IBM introduced theIBM SmartCloud framework, designed to support theSmarter Planet initiative.[38] Later that year, the US government established the Federal Risk Management Program,FedRAMP, becoming the first government-wide cloud services accreditation program with standardized risk assessment methodologies for cloud products and services. Later on October 12,iCloud was launched, allowing users to store personal information across multiple devices and share with other users.[39]
In June 2012, On June 7, Oracle announced theOracle Cloud.[40] In May,Google Compute Engine was released in preview and subsequently rolled out into General Availability in December 2013.[41] Also in 2013,Docker launched as a PaaS model to host containers in the cloud for software development.[42]
In December 2019,Amazon launchedAWS Outposts, a service that extends AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools to customer datacenters, co-location spaces, or on-premises facilities.[43]
Since theglobal pandemic of 2020, cloud technology jumped ahead in popularity due to the level of security of data and the flexibility of working options for all employees, notably remote workers.[44] For example, Zoom grew over 160% in 2020 alone.[45] A survey of 750 organizations found that 90% increased their cloud usage more than planned during the pandemic; for 29%, it was "significantly more than expected."[46] This created a labor shortage of cloud architects, among other specialized job roles.[47] For example, organizations posted 775,022 cloud computing jobs in 2020, an increase of 94% from 2017.[48]
Security and privacy are still a major concern due to security breaches and one of the main focuses of research. CloudChain, a cloud-oriented blockchain system is designed to increase the layers of security.[49]
Currently, global spending on cloud computing services has reached $706 billion and theInternational Data Corporation predicts it to reach $1.3 trillion by 2025.[50]
You can think of our electronic meeting place as the Cloud. PersonaLink was built from the ground up to give handheld communicators and other devices easy access to a variety of services. [...] Telescript is the revolutionary software technology that makes intelligent assistance possible. Invented by General Magic, AT&T is the first company to harness Telescript, and bring its benefits to people everywhere. [...] Very shortly, anyone with a computer, a personal communicator, or television will be able to use intelligent assistance in the Cloud. And our new meeting place is open, so that anyone, whether individual, entrepreneur, or a multinational company, will be able to offer information, goods, and services.
AT&T and the film's director, David Hoffman, pulled out the cloud metaphor–something that had long been used among networking and telecom types. [...]
"You can think of our electronic meeting place as the cloud," says the film's narrator, [...]
David Hoffman, the man who directed the film and shaped all that cloud imagery, was a General Magic employee.
