History of Cloud Computing (Essay Sample)

Cloud Computing
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Abstract
Cloud computing services have become an important part of running an organization in today’s modern world. They offer users fundamental computing services such as networking, storage or application deployment in one infrastructure that is accessed online and therefore gives access to all these services at any time and anywhere as long as an internet connection is available. The Cloud computing services have been developed by multiple multinational companies so that they can offer their services to their multinational companies. The Cloud computer is used in multiple ways today. First, they are used for their software as a service model to provide users with access to applications and software whenever they need it without the need for acquiring and installing it themselves. It also offers a platform as a service model that allows the users of the service to deploy their own application to multiple users through the use of the cloud infrastructure without incurring the resource cost of deployment. The last model offered by cloud-based computer services is the infrastructure as a service model that provide the fundamental services of a computer to the user online. The scope of cloud computing services will grow over time due to the globalization of markets and the many benefits that it offers to organizations that will utilize the services in order to keep up with their competition.
 
Cloud Computing
Introduction to Cloud Computing
Cloud computing involves the offering of services used by computers such as databases, servers, networks, software, and storage, over the internet instead of requiring owning the services physically instead it offers computers services on demand at any time and can be accessed anywhere in the world. The services offered through cloud computing are usually shared between multiple users who gain access to the cloud computing services through cloud providers who will charge for the use of the cloud services by the users. The use of cloud-based computing services allows organizations to save on costs that would have been used to set up infrastructures such as databases and servers. The cloud service providers instead offer organizations the infrastructure which allows them to focus on improving and enhancing their business processes instead of wasting resources on establishing a functioning infrastructure.
Cloud-based computer providers offer their services through various models such as the software as a service model which provides users with access to software that they can use at any time, this means that companies won’t have to install and maintain applications but instead they can rely on a third party to maintain their software applications for them. The other model is the platform as a service model which allows the users of the model to distribute their applications to any consumer who has an internet connection, the model provides users with hardware and software tools, which the provider hosts, necessary for the development of applications. Finally, the last model is the infrastructure as a service where the users are provided with access to basic computer resources such as networks and servers and it also offers the automation of administrative processes such as scaling dynamically (Antonopoulos& Gillam, 2010).
History of Cloud Computing
Cloud computing first became popular during the year two thousand and beyond. The American National Aeronautics and Space Administration was the first company to utilize cloud-based processes when carrying out their projects in two thousand and eight. Later that same year the European space agencies enhanced the cloud-based services by making sure that the quality of service was guaranteed so that the interaction between real-time applications and the cloud-based infrastructure was as effective and efficient as possible. Soon after that, organizations began to shift from owning their own computer assets to utilizing the cloud-based services. Company’s like Amazon and Microsoft developed and deployed their own cloud-based services such as Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud and Microsoft’s Azure which was popular for a while before being dropping into relative obscurity. NASA then developed OpenStack which was open-source software that could allow organizations to offer cloud computing services that run on non-specialized hardware but instead will use the standard hardware. Finally, Oracle launched the Oracle cloud which was the first to offer users access to all the information technology solution at ones (Antonopoulos& Gillam, 2010).
How Cloud Computing is used today
Cloud computing is used in a number of ways today thanks to its benefits. One of the ways that the services are used is when organizations utilize the services in order to transform their operations to become more efficient and effective which will significantly cut the costs of the organization no longer has to rely on acquiring or developing the computer services and then installing and maintaining them. The cloud computing services are also used by organizations to take care of the maintenance and installation of the relevant software through the utilization of the platform as a service which will allow the organizations to develop and manage computer applications without actually incurring the cost of producing them. Another way that cloud computing is used is when users, especially organizations, use it to store their data which can be used for backup. Because the information stored in the cloud is safe from many security threats, organizations can store information, for example, email and other digital documents, on the cloud without worrying about the cost of securing and maintaining that information. Also, the Cloud offers fast and easy access to the stored information anywhere in the world and therefore organizations and users can retrieve their stored information anytime they want. Cloud computing services are also used to stream video and audio products. Users can store and access videos and audio products online and then watch and listen to them online, companies such as Google’s Youtube, Twitch, and Netflix utilize the cloud computing services in order to provide their services to the rest of the world. Another way that cloud-computing is utilized by its users is when they use the services to host websites so that they are saved on a platform that is always online which means that the websites will always be accessible to its users and won’t suffer from too much downtime. Cloud hosting saves the user from constantly having to maintain the hosted website or blog. The services offered by cloud computing can also be used to deliver software to users whenever they demand it. This means that any number of users from anywhere in the world can access and use the software that was stored in the cloud. Finally, cloud computing services offer software as a service which is used by organizations today to track data and then analyze it to determine the patterns in the data which a