The Cloud Computing History

Why should you use the cloud? By using the cloud, you can save money by focusing on your core business goals rather than dealing with IT issues. Also, you can work virtually anywhere and anytime using a laptop or a smartphone. The cloud solution improves the three important pillars of any business – time, resource, and money. Let’s go back in time and check the evolution of this technology since the beginning of the first computer to better understand how you can take advantage of the cloud, and to predict the expansion of this service in the future, see chart below.

By 2000, every element (client/server, virtualization, and internet) for cloud computing was already present. The cloud started to be very popular worldwide by 2010; it made the data sharing easy, and reduced the money spent on IT equipment. There are three different cloud types:

• Public cloud
• Private cloud
• Hybrid cloud

Public cloud: The services (storage, software) are located off-site, you need internet to access to these services. Three public cloud examples include Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.

Private cloud: In this type of cloud, you store data and maintain the software in your infrastructure or by a third party, this solution provides high data security and more control on data.

Hybrid cloud: This solution combines the advantages of both private and public cloud. The user decides on which data should be stored in a public cloud, and which data should be saved in a private cloud. The three main service models of the cloud are one of its strength:

• IaaS
• PaaS
• SaaS

IaaS: IaaS stands for Infrastructure as a service. Basically, you rent just a computer online from a specialized company, that company is only limited to maintain the hardware components (storage capacity, network, operating system), you are in charge for the rest of applications.
PaaS: Platform as a service offers the features of IaaS model, and adds software servers with some applications.

SaaS: This third cloud model is known as Software as a Service is more popular among users and businesses. The best example of this model is a webmail service, where users use any browser to access the service, rather than a particular application in the case of IaaS or PaaS model.
After the brief definition above of the main service models of the cloud computing, let’s take a look at the chart below to check the forecast up to 2020 and starting from 2008 (Diagram for hover and click on):

The service as a software is very popular among consumers and businesses; it is predicted that by 2020, the market of SaaS will double compared to the year of 2015. Contrarily to the SaaS market, the market of PaaS doesn’t change a lot from 2015 to 2020. Nevertheless, the ALM component of PaaS known as application lifecycle management platform will grow from 11% in 2011 to 35% in 2016. This predicted growth is not a surprise because the AML offers more flexibility, improves productivity, and enhances quality.

These improvements are done by synchronizing users’ tools, as well as by allowing every team member to know the type of changes, when they were made, and who did the changes during the development cycle. See charts below for more details about how services of PaaS are forecasted to change between 2011 and 2016 (Diagram for hover and click on):

Cloud computing presents a significant opportunity for businesses, as it frees the decision-makers from spending their energy on IT problems, and helps them to focus more on their primary business task. Today, being on the cloud is not just publicity to promote the brand, but a real competitive advantage. Cloud computing brings huge improvements in collaboration, efficiency, data sharing, and money-saving.