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Time-Sharing
“Time-sharing”, which is the act of sharing CPU time, was used in the 1950’s to get the most out of the expensive large-scale mainframe computers. While mainframes made it easy to support multiple applications, maintaining hardware was extremely inefficient and expensive. -
ARPANET
J.C.R Licklider developed the “predecessor to the Internet”, Advanced Research Projects Agency Networks (ARPANET). Licklider envisioned a technology world that promoted interconnectedness and an open unrestricted accessibility to data and programs. -
Virtual Machines
The operating system known as VM or Virtual Machines was created in the 1970’s with help from IBM and essentially evolved the concept of time-sharing. VM allowed various computing environments to exist on a single physical platform. -
Cloud Computing Termed
Information Systems professor, Ramnath Chellapa, was the first person to coin the term “cloud computing”. She defined it as the new “computing paradigm where the boundaries of computing will be determined by economic rationale rather than technical limits alone”. By the end of the 1990’s companies began to gain a better understanding of the possibilities that cloud computing could offer. -
Salesforce.com Enters the Movement
In 1999, Salesforce.com contributed to the movement toward cloud computing by developing the concept of delivering enterprise-level applications to end users via the Internet. -
Amazon Joins the Movement
Following Salesforce.com, Amazon.com contributed towards cloud computing by introducing Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon Web Services gave users access to storage and computation solutions through the Internet. -
EC2 Launched
Amazon.com took cloud computing to a new level by launching the first commercial cloud, called the Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2). EC2 gave developers the opportunity to rent space to store and run their own applications. Competitors in the technological market responded immediately in the following years in hope to gain market share by launching their own cloud functions. -
Dropbox Inc. Created
In 2007 a MIT student made cloud storage a commodity by the creation of Dropbox Inc., a file hosting and synchronization service. -
Force.com
Salesforce.com launched Force.com, which allows companies to build, store, and run all the applications and websites they need to run their business in the cloud. -
Google App is Launced
Google launched Google App, which was the entry of the first pure play technology company into the Cloud Computing market. Google, a dominant Internet company, entering into this market was clearly a major step towards wide spread adoption of cloud computing. As with all their other products they introduced radical pricing models with a free entry level plan and extremely low cost computing and storage services which are currently among the lowest in the market. -
Azure is Launched
Microsoft launched Azure with the hope to provide an integrated solution that streamlines the development of web and mobile apps while enabling easy integration. The launch of Azure is a key event in the history of cloud computing with the largest software company making a small but significant shift to the web.
