Cloud Computing

The basic concept of cloud computing originally began in the 60’s with the development of ARPANET. It was the developer and enabler of ARPANET, J.C.R Licklider that was aiming for an “intergalactic computer network”. He wanted everyone on the globe to be interconnected and accessing programs and data at any site from anywhere. Now, almost half a century later , this has been achieved.

 Cloud computing really began to grow in the 90’s with the introduction of significant bandwidth beginning to spread all over the world. Every day I find myself using multiple cloud computing applications without realising it, such as: Google Drive, Dropbox, Box.net, Spotify/Grooveshark, Evernote, YouTube, Facebook and Blackboard. As a student of this generation, I find it very hard to imagine how universities managed before cloud computing!

As it stands, mainly large expansive companies are the main users of cloud computing as it’s seen to be the most beneficial to them.Take IBM for example investing $360m to make a data center in North Carolina to provide cloud computing facilities for their clients just last autumn. What about the SME’s? As we progress we can see aspects of I.T gradually filtering throughout the entire company, not just refined to the “IT crowd” and cloud computing is no exception. SME’s are now learning that they may need to undertake cloud computing to be more efficient and cost effective. The enterprise sector of the Europa group carried out a report to show these findings.

With 90% of the worlds data generated in the last 2 years alone, it is obvious that cloud computing is the way forward for everyone. Accessible information across the network, just as J.C.R Licklider was hoping for.