The History of Cloud Computing

Even though the term “cloud computing” is modern and it’s just recently that different cloud computing service provider and different cloud service provider here in the Philippines that offers cloud computing as a service, the concept of sharing data and information over a network is not that new to the industry and dates back to the era of mainframe computing in the 1950s when users were able to access a useful central system though multiple user nodes. Since getting and maintaining computing capacity was expensive, it made some economic issues to share them. 

The concept of virtualization was pioneered in the 1970s,  there were a number of virtual computers run on a single piece of hardware but that concept did not catch on early but in the next 30 years were dominated by personal computers. 

Then around 2005, businesses and companies all around the globe realized that it made much more economic sense to buy shared computing resources from the cloud because it took much less effort and time, had more capabilities and was cheaper at that time as well. 

Present Times

Cloud computing is a model for sending or delivering self-service and popular computing resources with network access, location-independent resource pooling, pay-per-use business model and rapid elasticity. Most cloud services can be accessed using the Web browser like Chrome and Firefox and some companies offer dedicated apps specific for their platform only. For organizations, no matter big or small, the most popular services seem to be Email services such as Office 365 or Gmail. Adding to that is some collaboration and productivity tools like Webex and Skype seem to be a popular line in the business industry, CRM tools such as Salesforce, Zoho and helpdesk platforms such as Zendesk and ServiceNow for the lifeline of any organization and company nowadays. 

The Future of Cloud

In advanced markets like the US, it is already Cloud First in each state of them. The concept of a “Cloud First” strategy began in the US federal government and has since spread into the commercial sector of different businesses. Most companies, irrespective of their size, are already looking at the cloud as the first option for everything; when it comes to uploading a new capability or application or any other services that they provide. It turns out that no one wants to build and maintain an application, equipment or platform on their own data centers or servers, which means that enterprises across the globe are waking up to the benefits of an on-demand, pay-as-you-go infrastructure. 

According to Gartner, more than 30% of the 100 of largest suppliers and developers of new software investments will have shifted from cloud-first to cloud-only by 2019. We now live in a digital economy and with the number and with the number of IoT equipment and devices growing continuously, we don’t just need access to information, we consume it to make real-time decisions. The huge amount of data generated will also need to be processed and collected in the cloud and it’s not just servers, predictions are that conclude will also move to the cloud.