Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. The term is generally used to describe data centers available to many users over the Internet. Large clouds, predominant today, often have functions distributed over multiple locations from central servers. If the connection to the user is relatively close, it may be designated an edge server.
Clouds may be limited to a single organization (enterprise clouds]), or be available to multiple organizations (public cloud).Cloud computing relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economies of scale.
Advocates of public and hybrid clouds note that cloud computing allows companies to avoid or minimize up-front IT infrastructure costs. Proponents also claim that cloud computing allows enterprises to get their applications up and running faster, with improved manageability and less maintenance, and that it enables IT teams to more rapidly adjust resources to meet fluctuating and unpredictable demand, providing the burst computing capability: high computing power at certain periods of peak demand.
Cloud providers typically use a "pay-as-you-go" model, which can lead to unexpected operating expenses if administrators are not familiarized with cloud-pricing models.
The availability of high-capacity networks, low-cost computers and storage devices as well as the widespread adoption of hardware virtualization, service-oriented architecture and autonomic and utility computing has led to growth in cloud computing. As of 2017, most cloud computers run a Linux-based operating system.
Cloud computing was popularized with Amazon.com releasing its Elastic Compute Cloud product in 2006. References to the phrase "cloud computing" appeared as early as 1996, with the first known mention in a Compaq internal document.
The cloud symbol was used to represent networks of computing equipment in the original ARPANET by as early as 1977,and the CSNET by 1981—both predecessors to the Internet itself. The word cloud was used as a metaphor for the Internet and a standardized cloud-like shape was used to denote a network on telephony schematics. With this simplification, the implication is that the specifics of how the endpoints of a network are connected are not relevant to understanding the diagram.
The term cloud was used to refer to platforms for distributed computing as early as 1993, when Apple spin-off General Magic and AT&T used it in describing their (paired) Telescript and PersonaLink technologies. In Wired's April 1994 feature "Bill and Andy's Excellent Adventure II", Andy Hertzfeld commented on Telescript, General Magic's distributed programming language:
"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 and ASN.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."
Early history
During the 1960s, the initial concepts of time-sharing became popularized via RJE (Remote Job Entry);this terminology was mostly associated with large vendors such as IBM and DEC. Full-time-sharing solutions were available by the early 1970s on such platforms as Multics (on GE hardware), Cambridge CTSS, and the earliest UNIX ports (on DEC hardware). Yet, the "data center" model where users submitted jobs to operators to run on IBM's mainframes was overwhelmingly predominant.
In the 1990s, telecommunications companies, who previously offered primarily dedicated point-to-point data circuits, began offering virtual 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. 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 the network infrastructure.
As computers became more diffused, scientists and technologists explored ways to make large-scale computing power available to more users through time-sharing. They experimented with algorithms to optimize the infrastructure, platform, and applications to prioritize CPUs and increase efficiency for end users.
The use of the cloud metaphor for virtualized services dates at least to General Magic in 1994, where it was used to describe the universe of "places" that mobile agents in the Telescript environment could go. As described by Andy Hertzfeld:
"The beauty of Telescript," says Andy, "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".
The use of the cloud metaphor is credited to General Magic communications employee David Hoffman, based on long-standing use in networking and telecom. In addition to use by General Magic itself, it was also used in promoting AT&T's associated PersonaLink Services.
2000s
In July 2002, Amazon created subsidiary Amazon Web Services, with the goal to "enable developers to build innovative and entrepreneurial applications on their own." In March 2006 Amazon introduced its Simple Storage Service (S3), followed by Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) in August of the same year. These products pioneered the usage of server virtualization to deliver IaaS at a cheaper and on-demand pricing basis.
In April 2008, Google released the beta version of Google App Engine. The App Engine was a PaaS (one of the first of its kind) which provided fully maintained infrastructure and a deployment platform for users to create web applications using common languages/technologies such as Python, Node.js and PHP. The goal was to eliminate the need for some administrative tasks typical of an IaaS model, while creating a platform where users could easily deploy such applications and scale them to demand.
In early 2008, NASA's Nebula, enhanced in the RESERVOIR European Commission-funded project, became the first open-source software for deploying private and hybrid clouds, and for the federation of clouds.
By mid-2008, Gartner saw an opportunity for cloud computing "to shape the relationship among consumers of IT services, those who use IT services and those who sell them" and observed that "organizations are switching from company-owned hardware and software assets to per-use service-based models" so that the "projected shift to computing will result in dramatic growth in IT products in some areas and significant reductions in other areas." In 2008, the U.S. National Science Foundation began the Cluster Exploratory program to fund academic research using Google-IBM cluster technology to analyze massive amounts of data.
In 2009, the government of France announced Project Andromède to create a "sovereign cloud" or national cloud computing, with the government to spend €285 million. The initiative failed badly and Cloudwatt was shut down on 1 February 2020.
2010s
In February 2010, Microsoft released Microsoft Azure, which was announced in October 2008. In July 2010, Rackspace Hosting and NASA jointly launched an open-source cloud-software initiative known as OpenStack. The OpenStack project intended to help organizations offering cloud-computing services running on standard hardware. The early code came from NASA's Nebula platform as well as from Rackspace's Cloud Files platform. As an open-source offering and along with other open-source solutions such as CloudStack, Ganeti, and OpenNebula, it has attracted attention by several key communities. Several studies aim at comparing these open source offerings based on a set of criteria.
On March 1, 2011, IBM announced the IBM SmartCloud framework to support Smarter Planet. Among the various components of the Smarter Computing foundation, cloud computing is a critical part. On June 7, 2012, Oracle announced the Oracle Cloud. This cloud offering is poised to be the first to provide users with access to an integrated set of IT solutions, including the Applications (SaaS), Platform (PaaS), and Infrastructure (IaaS) layers. In May 2012, Google Compute Engine was released in preview, before being rolled out into General Availability in December 2013.
In 2019, Linux was the most common OS used on Microsoft Azure. In December 2019, Amazon announced AWS Outposts, which is a fully managed service that extends AWS infrastructure, AWS services, APIs, and tools to virtually any customer datacenter, co-location space, or on-premises facility for a truly consistent hybrid experience.
Similar concepts
The goal of cloud computing is to allow users to take benefit from all of these technologies, without the need for deep knowledge about or expertise with each one of them. The cloud aims to cut costs and helps the users focus on their core business instead of being impeded by IT obstacles.
The main enabling technology for cloud computing is virtualization. Virtualization software separates a physical computing device into one or more "virtual" devices, each of which can be easily used and managed to perform computing tasks. With operating system–level virtualization essentially creating a scalable system of multiple independent computing devices, idle computing resources can be allocated and used more efficiently. Virtualization provides the agility required to speed up IT operations and reduces cost by increasing infrastructure utilization. Autonomic computing automates the process through which the user can provision resources on-demand. By minimizing user involvement, automation speeds up the process, reduces labor costs and reduces the possibility of human errors.
Cloud computing uses concepts from utility computing to provide metrics for the services used. Cloud computing attempts to address QoS (quality of service) and reliability problems of other grid computing models.
SECOND PART OF CLOUD TECHNOLOGY WILL BE UPLOADED ON NEXT SCHEDULE FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM,FACEBOOK AND PINTEREST
DISCLAIMER
The information is provided by Tecquisition for general informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional legal advice. If you have any feedback, comments, requests for technical support or other inquiries, please mail us by tecqusition@gmail.com.
Comments