The cloud: "Reigning" on Humanity's Parade
If you work in Information Technology or a related field,
chances are sooner or later someone will ask you about the “Cloud” and what
exactly you do in relation to it. We have been told by various IT communities
that there is no commonly accepted technical definition of the cloud. In some
ways, they are correct. However it can be easily explained to people on all
levels of technology by associating the popularized term with its most
essential functions.
In essence, “the cloud” has become the marketing term for
Data Center. The term is most commonly used to sell hosted services through application
service provisioning, running client server software at a remote location. For
those with little or no tech experience it can be even more simply explained as
networking, storage, security and application services provided via internet
protocol. Network-based services which appear to be provided by server hardware
are in fact provided by virtual hardware; simulated by software running on one
or more actual devices. Because the virtual servers do not physically exist,
they can therefore be moved or scaled up and down without affecting the end user.
In the early days of information technology, cloud computing
was used most often by the scientific community for computing over a network,
by running a program on many connected computers simultaneously. As the internet evolved and client terminals
which were originally used only to communicate to mainframes began to “share”
physical access and CPU time, academic institutions and corporations put a
greater emphasis on the ability to expand by sharing resources. The practice
became known as “time sharing” and in some cases it eliminated the need for
large expensive computer equipment. As a result, several corporations began to
market time sharing commercially beginning in the 1960’s.
In early 1990’s, telecommunications companies saw a golden
opportunity. Most Telco companies had previously offered only dedicated
point-to-point data circuits. With the advent of network-based virtual services
they began to offer virtual private network (or VPN) services with comparable
quality of service but at a lower cost. They were able to use bandwidth more
effectively by switching traffic on the network and balancing server use.
Today, the cloud symbol typically designates the demarcation point at which the
provider’s responsibility ends and the user’s responsibility begins. In some
cases the cloud extends this boundary to cover servers and network
infrastructure.
Cloud computing now shapes the relationship between
consumers of IT services and the companies who provide them. More and more organizations
are switching from company-owned hardware and software to per-use service-based
resources resulting in dramatic growth in IT products and services.
Skip Pulley
Editor in Chief, Catharsis Magazine
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