Background

Background

In order to understand the new developments which constitute the current applications of cloud computing, it is important to understand its foundation and history. Even before the internet was invented, American computer scientist John McCarthy asserted that "computation may someday be organized as a public utility" (Garfinkel, 2011). His assertion foreshadows the shared space concept that the cloud represents in the 21^st century. Other scholars hinted to this shared application, but stopped short of predicting the process of cloud computing available today. In the 1990’s virtual private networks set somewhat of a framework for cloud computing by managing shared bandwidth space for network users (Rochwerger, 2009). Beginning in the early 2000’s, the cloud computing concept was modernized by improved data centers with significant internal efficiencies. Amazon was the first to launch a cloud computing service in 2006, however, Gartner enhanced its popularity and developed a cloud computing foundation that allowed companies to skip the large hardware and switch to the cloud service model. Today, continuous innovations and developments integrate the cloud with the internet to allow for storage of applications and documents over independent high capacity networks at low costs.