Globrocks Corporation

A Brief History Of Cloud Computing-

Let's take a look at the history of Cloud Computing. As mentioned earlier, Cloud Computing is an Internet based application delivery. In 1946 a comic science-fiction writer, named Murry Leinster created a story called, "A Logic Named Joe", which diagrammatically laid out the Internet, as well as pointed out most its expected strengths and weaknesses.

In 1960, the original John McCarthy did work on the underlying concept when he envisioned that "computation may someday be organized as a public utility". At that time, the "cloud" was already being used commercially to refer to the large ATM networks. Earlier in the 1950s, more than THREE decades before the internet age, IBM became dominant in the emerging computer industry. Ten years later, the reality of developing an internet actually began. Many proprietary protocols were developed for computer networking, they went through several stages, then series of research and development. The X.25 protocol was however, predominant, and was primarily used at the time.

Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) came out with a precise combination of Networking Hardware and Software solution called DECnet in 1974/75, they called this design DIGITAL Network Architecture (DNA). DNA was meant to represent or define Networking Architecture standard at that time. DECnet also consisted of some or many of the DNA Suite of Networking Protocols. Just about the same year, in 1975, Microsoft Corporation was formed; Apple was already in the early computer business as the strongest desktop hardware and software visionary of the "next big" thing, while Microsoft firmly focused specifically in just Software, established as the only Software Engineering Company of the time, making it the very first Software Engineering Company. IBM stratified mainly as a hardware vendor. DEC then arrived in the market with its Ultrix brand, a UNIX flavor, and Apple Macintosh computers, in addition, Personal Computers (PCs) running DOS and Windows used the DEC Pathworks brand. These systems worked as DECnet end-nodes or terminals on Networks of the early times.

That same year in 1974, IBM had developed a proprietary networking architecture called Systems Network Architecture (SNA), and put its' resources in full gear with a strong bet on the centralization of internet servers to serve the Global Internet and Wold Wide Web. It was very similar to the Thin Client / Server-Type Architecture we are more familiar with. Following this new path toward the future for the World Wide Web Internet using Systems Network Architecture (SNA), IBM later improved it to the one they called Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking (APPN) protocol, which was originally designed to be the Digital Equipment Corporation's "DECnet killer". The IBM SNA/APPN protocol turned out unacceptably complex and extremely expensive especially during system Migrations. The system was designed around the idea that the internet itself and generally, computing, will be operated and served by large Centralized or "Cloud" system of IBM Mainframe Servers, and offered same way as regular  utilities like water and electricity on some type of subscription basis to consumers.

As IBM's frustration continued with the emerging internet and computing system, having reached the end of the road with it's proprietary SNA and APPN for Global "Clouding of Our Computing", Microsoft emerged in full software power and might, just in time, amidst the imminent world transformation and technical frustrations and confusion with a new and different paradigm-the release of Windows NT Servers and Windows Desktop PCs, which solved the challenges at hand, subsequently changing everything in that ERA. The Microsoft Partner ecosystem of Solution Providers apparently stepped in very quickly into that Vertical, providing Custom Solutions, adapting the products to specific company needs for the internet, extranet and intranet, networking, applications and IT Architecture Infrastructural needs, thereby bending and flipping things sideways, making that entire Vertical purely Horizontal. Shortly afterwards, the IBM SNA/APPN became completely superseded by TCP/IP (Internet)- The new era had become fully realized. 

The first real TCP/IP-based wide-area network became operational by January 1, 1983. This new network was opened to the commercial interests in 1988. This was followed by the early web browsers ViolaWWW, and later, Mosaic in 1992. Mosaic begat the early Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape directly or indirectly depending on how you really look at it, this was prior Microsoft Internet Browser war with Netscape which started in the mid-90's. Today, the World Wide Web, the internet itself and all the information on them are served by millions of personally owned, independently owned, commercial, and company managed systems and servers all over the world. Google by 1998 had indexed 60 million pages on the World Wide Web; stepping in much heavily later with its search technology that gathered information on millions and billions of these systems across the globe, organized them, making it much easer to find information in the internet.

In the 21st century, another new wave of cloud computing solutions and new business models started to emerge mainly as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Some were more successful than others, many failed utterly due to either an unprofitable business model and/or other business factors after the Dot-Com Bubble Busted in 2000. Things improved at just a few companies like EBay and Amazon after they implemented better cloud computing right after the Dot-Com Bubble using newer Cloud Architecture.

Recently, back again in 2007, Google, and IBM has pursued this area on a much larger scale. IBM has most recently, in November 24th 2008 announced a new Cloud Computing Consulting and Implementation Services area.  The traditional on-premises enterprise software companies such as Oracle, SAP and Microsoft has suddenly found themselves in new war over the method and delivery of business applications to enterprise businesses, with recent SaaS-Powered Cloud Computing Software Business Model; the new SaaS Business Software Vendors like Google and Salesforces.com. This situation  has graduated very quickly to a much bigger war over the entire Cloud on all the fronts.  In August 2008, some organizations began testing and switching some applications from company-owned hardware and software assets to the Cloud, resulting in a certain level of growth in IT products and services in some areas and inversely in other areas. Many start-ups has also done significant work in this area throwing hard punches at Microsoft and others.

While all these are still going on at the present time, some old and newer key players and investors in the area believe deeply that Cloud Computing or "Clouding Our Computing" is the way to go toward the future, and the issue is just a matter of when, others has said that it's a "complete gibberish", while some others completely dismissed it as "a marketing hype campaign." Regardless of the benefits, the privacy of users, and business customer/client information, trade secrets, intellectual properties, data integrity, and security in Cloud Computing has become of increasing concern. The rights of businesses, and users is also a very big issue on their sensitive information stored out there in the cloud.

With regards to the Cloud Computing, there are still a few issues; things to look at critically, and logically from a strong Business IT and Business Technology future perspective side of things in terms of feasibility, growth and scalability as to how these really work, technically, how they fit into the enterprises, mid-sized, small businesses, and the really small businesses; which direction they are going in Business IT, Engineering and Information Technologies within and outside the areas of Unified IT Architecture Infrastructure, and Unified Communications.

Architecture and Characteristics of Cloud Computing-

One of the biggest drawbacks in adopting new technologies has been inoperability with existing older systems, protocols and databases, thus, the costly migration, upgrade issues and headaches. XML has gone a long way to solve many issues with pulling and extracting external data and information from different types of databases or sources.

In most cases where a business is being left behind, system migration and upgrade has turned out so expensive that it becomes extremely difficult to do, or there is just no way to continue to justify the cost of the project even with the availability of fully tax-deductible financing. Today, we have solution sets available to efficiently Integrate, Connect and InterConnect disparate systems in Heterogonous IT with Telecommunication Systems, into Business processes and Systems Databases.

The Cloud architecture uses a Service Oriented-Type Architecture of hardware and software systems in the delivery of cloud computing, extending that to the client eliminates the need to install or run applications on the local computer. The local computer utilize web browsers and/or software applications to access the cloud applications made available to them.

Cloud Infrastructure may be considered an "Infrastructure-as-a-Service" (IaaS), that is the delivery of computer infrastructure such as virtualization environment and operating environment as a service. Now, this is one of the many situations where the real Business IT, Business Technology Technical connection shows up too as well,  in this type of Unified IT Architecture Infrastructure blue print, a core aspect of the solid foundation building blocks, where the Next-Generation Systems Architecture, Infrastructure and the Domain expertise will come in to play the role that make AnyThing and EveryThing possible, AnyHow they are needed.

Currently, it seems as though almost every Technology-Enabled Solution, Services and Application will become available alternatively, residing in the Next-Generation "Cloud of the Future".

There are, and will be much more radical combinations of newer business models created in this area, this ERA. Many of the older or existing traditional Managed Services, Hosting and Hosted Solution providers will partner strategically and incorporate into this new direction as "Cloud Hosting Solution Providers", Hosting "Public" Cloud, providing the Cloud Computing environment. While some will be very profitable and successful, others that are less profitable may form a merger, go out of business or get acquired.

One of the other biggest challenges being the most profitable business model, with not only the right combination of good solution extensions and services, but also that of the radical operational and business model of the organization itself as the extreme stiff competition reaches its ultimate peak.
 
Microsoft has bought several or most of the biggest more efficient state-of-the-art data centers out there. They've silently built huge cloud system of systems. End-Users will very likely be offered several services for free, in the form of software, certain applications or online public services, and such. Microsoft has also been handing out unlimited number of domains very freely on Windows Live, so, if any of these free offerings happens to be an area a company makes money and they are not the ones being paid by Microsoft, it becomes obvious what will happen. End-Users will also get much more flexibility AnyHow they wish to use these services. This is where one of the biggest differences will be unfolded.

While Solutions may be built using combinations of Ruby, JAVA, PHP, AJAX and Microsoft .NET etc Development Platforms together. They will however be limited when it comes to scalability, and with effective security in place- Technically, it's already extremely difficult to manage, and to do the software Front-End provisioning and back-End Scaling well for a Public Cloud Infrastructure using any Platform. Microsoft is really the one that has a TRUE Single Directory and PLATFORM of Server System, Client-side and the Development Tools using .Net and Visual Studio. The Microsoft Core Products and Services include- Office Suite, upcoming Office Web Applications, Groove Servers, the Microsoft Online Services, Active Directory, Office SharePoint Server, Office Communication Servers w/Communicator, BizTalk Server, Exchange, SQL 2008, and Dynamics Application that run on top of them, and the newer ERPLive.com and CRMLive.com.

The Next-Generation Unified IT Architecture Infrastructure will tie many pieces together. They'll be easier to manage, most things we currently do manually will become automated with self-healing capabilities, automated backup, easy data restore operations, disaster recovery, scalability, on-demand application capabilities, moreover, preventive maintenance will be built-in. Many Enterprises, Mid-Sized and Small Businesses will get many options and will enjoy having full CONTROL over their data, and all the information they wish to share or exchange. The option will be available for users or businesses to store local and mobile copies they can carry around, modify and work on online or offline, collaborate, exchange, and synchronize only the data and information they want to send to the Public Cloud seamlessly, using AnyDevice. The best, most efficient, reliable and the most SECURE systems has always been, and will continue to be the ones that are much more Independently Controlled and Managed; the next new generation of PRIVATE CLOUD COMPUTING within the internal Business IT environments.