( Cloud Computing )
Advocates claim that cloud computing allows companies to avoid upfront infrastructure costs (e.g., purchasing servers). As well, it enables organizationsfocus on their core businesses instead of spending time and money on computer infrastructure.[4] Proponents also claim that cloud computing allows enterprises to get their applications up and running faster, with improved manageability and less maintenance, and enables Information Technology (IT) teams to more rapidly adjust resources to meet fluctuating and unpredictable business demand.[4][5][6] Cloud providers typically use a "pay as you go" model.
History
The origin of the term cloud computing in computing is unclear. The word "cloud" is commonly used in science to describe a large agglomeration of objects that visually appear from a distance as a cloud and describes any set of things whose details are not further inspected in a given context.[14] Another explanation is that the old programs that drew network schematics surrounded the icons for servers with a circle, and a cluster of servers in a network diagram had several overlapping circles, which resembled a cloud.[15] In analogy to the above usage, 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. Later it was used to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams. With this simplification, the implication is that the specifics of how the end points of a network are connected are not relevant for the purposes of understanding the diagram. The cloud symbol was used to represent networks of computing equipment in the original ARPANET by as early as 1977,[16] and the CSNET by 1981[17]—both predecessors to the Internet itself.
The term cloud has been used to refer to platforms for distributed computing. In Wired's April 1994 feature "Bill and Andy's Excellent Adventure II" on the Apple spin-off General Magic, Andy Hertzfeld commented on General Magic's distributed programming language Telescript that:
References to "cloud computing" in its modern sense appeared as early as 1996, with the earliest known mention in a Compaq internal document.[19] The popularization of the term can be traced to 2006 when Amazon.com introduced its Elastic Compute Cloud.[20]
1970s
During the 1960s, the initial concepts of time-sharing became popularized via RJE (Remote Job Entry);[21] 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 mainframes was overwhelmingly predominant.
1990s
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.[citation needed] 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.[22] As computers became more diffused, scientists and technologists explored ways to make large-scale computing power available to more users through time-sharing.[citation needed] They experimented with algorithms to optimize the infrastructure, platform, and applications to prioritize CPUs and increase efficiency for end users.[23]
2000s
Since 2000, cloud computing has come into existence. In early 2008, NASA's OpenNebula, 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.[24] In the same year, efforts were focused on providing quality of service guarantees (as required by real-time interactive applications) to cloud-based infrastructures, in the framework of the IRMOS European Commission-funded project, resulting in a real-time cloud environment.[25][26] 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"[27] 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."[28]
In August 2006 Amazon introduced its Elastic Compute Cloud.[20] Microsoft Azure was announced as "Azure" in October 2008 and was released on 1 February 2010 as Windows Azure, before being renamed to Microsoft Azure on 25 March 2014.[29] For a time, Azure was on the TOP500 supercomputer list, before it dropped off it.[30] 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. On March 1, 2011, IBM announced the IBM SmartCloud framework to support Smarter Planet.[31] Among the various components of the Smarter Computing foundation, cloud computing is a critical part. On June 7, 2012, Oracle announced the Oracle Cloud.[32] While aspects of the Oracle Cloud are still in development, this cloud offering is poised to be the first to provide users with access to an integrated set of IT solutions, including the Applications
Cloud clients
Category:Cloud clients and Cloud API
Users access cloud computing using networked client devices, such as desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones and any Ethernet enabled device such as Home Automation Gadgets. Some of these devices—cloud clients—rely on cloud computing for all or a majority of their applications so as to be essentially useless without it. Examples are thin clients and the browser-based Chromebook. Many cloud applications do not require specific software on the client and instead use a web browser to interact with the cloud application. With Ajax and HTML5 these Web user interfaces can achieve a similar, or even better, look and feel to native applications. Some cloud applications, however, support specific client software dedicated to these applications (e.g., virtual desktop clients and most email clients). Some legacy applications (line of business applications that until now have been prevalent in thin client computing) are delivered via a screen-sharing technology.
