When I studied at the Technical University in Chur, there was a generational gap Type between our professors who learned the program with punch cards and us, students who were using keyboards.
Recently, when I spoke with a student who works with me in the same company, I got there is a similar gap today too between the professors who have ever seen a real server, and students for whom a server is a virtual cloud to which they access with their laptop.
What does cloud really mean?
What is this cloud? And why do we hear so much about it lately?
As Nicholas Carr states in his book “The Big Switch” that it is explained by a detour to the late 19th century, when the industrial revolution was largely completed. At that time, it was normal that the Factories were producing their own electricity for the production, by using coal, steam engines or hydraulic energy. Power generation was an important one and indispensable part of every factory. Then the Electricity came and the first power station (launched by Thomas Edison) and in few decades, it became possible to just start the factories and to connect power with electricity as much as needed, without producing that all by themselves.
Steam engine of James Watts
Cloud computing is a similar phenomenon, only it refers to Information technology instead of electricity. In fact, cloud providers have huge data centers. Hundreds of thousands of servers, and companies rent some of these Servers remotely as needed.
So instead of their own, they need to operate onsite data centers to handle applications such as e-mail, Websites and Data to host science companies today by using the cloud provider.
Cloud computing does not work without Internet
The basic requirement why this revolution became possible is of course Internet.
Exactly the way you need a distribution infrastructure to get power from a provider, you need a network, to access applications which are operated somewhere else. And so it’s not a coincidence that cloud computing came up just after the internet became ubiquitous.
Although that was the starting point, the cloud is, of course today more than just sending emails via a foreign server. Cloud providers are constantly expanding their offered Services such as databases, machine learning and disk space. U can use music streaming services such as Spotify, maps or games.
As a result, also came up the start-ups, The information technology Offer services, paved the way. Only 10 to 15 years ago there was one single Start-up, Which did anything in the information technology industry.
Spent and earned large amounts of money just by buying servers and being able to operate.
Today, you can spend just 100 Euros or and in few minutes to get a first-class running infrastructure up.
Where does the term “cloud” come from?
What does cloud mean? The cloud was created by Information Technicians in Structural Drawings of Networks for Using Labeling systems, which were a part of their own network, but operated were externally.
Structure and function of these external systems was irrelevant for the own network.
Today you store files in a place which exact function and Construction is also not relevant to the cloud. Nevertheless, you know how the product works by the term, like: data is sent to different servers distributed and available online from any location – you need only an internet access.
Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash