27
2
PART
II: C
LOUD
C
OMPUTING
O
VERVIEW
Why is it worth reading this chapter?
Cloud is used in almost every IT product announcement, new product
description and advertising, it had become impossible to ignore. Removing
the word Cloud from all the offerings and having a closer look on the
underlying methods and technology will show that all the products in an
evolutionary way use the network, resource virtualisation and
compartmentalisation. But be warned, classical IT Outsourcing is not a Cloud
service and virtualising a few servers is not a Cloud strategy.
It is important to have at least a little understanding about the technology,
the buzzwords used in the industry and the concepts to lead or follow a
qualified discussion. This chapter will give only an overview about the topics,
in depth analyses and more technical details are outlined in Part II of the
book. However, we recommend that the technology and complexity of the
services built or purchased should stay in the background, only the
organisational, business and commercial benefits of the solutions should
drive the decisions relating to the usage and level of take‐up of Cloud
computing.
2.1
Cloud History
In 1962, J. C. R. Licklider, the Head of the IPTO
3
with ARPA
4
,
already had the
idea of an "intergalactic computer network".
At about the same time, John McCarthy: "Computation may someday be
organised as a public utility." In 1966, Douglas Parkhill described in his book
"
The Challenge of the Computer Utility" how computer technology would
present itself in the future. Parkhill considered all of the attributes that we
associate with the Cloud today in his book; he talked about online, elastic,
seemingly unlimited resources and of public, private, community and
authority‐specific types of computer technology. In 1997, Ramnath
Chellappa was the first to formally use the term "Cloud Computing".
The technology behind Cloud computing is evolutionary and not
revolutionary, however, the uses this technology is put to are revolutionary.
The matter‐of‐factness with which a user assumes that the data/programs
3
Information Processing Techniques Office
4
United States of America Advanced Research Projects Agency
