The Evolution Of The Cloud

Computers and computing have changed dramatically over the years due to the innovation of new technology. This article looks at the path taken to achieve The Cloud.Some think that in some form the concept of The Could has been around since the development of the ARPNET, which was in itself a network enabling one computer to talk to another one. Others believe it was really down to an American, John McCarthy who thought that there should be a national computer network, just like the gas and electricity companies, and that was as far back as 1961. In reality, The Cloud network builds on the ideas of both these ideas, and it is only possible now due to the evolution of technology.Jumping forward to the 1980s and Grid Computing. This came about as several servers were used to boost processing power. This system broke down huge tasks and it delegated sections of the said task to each of its component servers and they worked simultaneously to produce the result. The result from the many servers could be seen through one terminal, but the terminal needed to have the same operating system as the terminal.In the 1990s and the Grid concept was developed further through the advent of dial-up internet and tasks such as storage, networks and applications could be isolated and used independently. This eventually meant that devices and the interfaces no longer needed to be the same to utilise the information on the Grid, leading to The Cloud as we know it today.


The Grid supported the concept of software as a service. With this advancement even the applications were stored at a virtual level. This is achieved with massive warehouses full of servers known as data centres and when combined they have a massive processing power. Each data centre is owned by a company, the bigger the company the more data centres they have, and when combined they have a massive processing power.This processing power is not only used to manage the digital devices we have in our homes and offices, but also search engines like Google. The Cloud is still evolving as we speak there are 4 main types of Cloud, private, community, public and hybrid, with more subsets being created fairly regularly.It is the ability of the data centres administrators to set up and manage the applications as an internet service that has made it possible for even small business to benefit from this technology.