The term “cloud computing” is of recent origin. It entered Wikipedia on 3rd March 2007. But it was in making for quiet some time. Although it has been mentioned for just over three years (2006) in context of services or other computing resources that can be rented over a network, cloud computing represents a culmination point in a series of developments which started some time back.
It has happened many times in human history. The idea comes first and it is realized a long time after that. Some times the realization may happen many decades later. For instance, the idea of geostationary satellite was proposed by Arthur Clark way back in 1945 but it took another twenty years when Syncom 2 was launched in 1963
Similarly cloud computing was in the making for many decades. The of vision of cloud computing was available since late 1960’s as seen below
"If computers of the kind I have advocated become the computers of the future, then computing may someday may be organized as a public utility just as the telephone is a public utility….. The computer utility could become the basis of a new and important industry."
- John McCarthy, MIT Centennial in 1961.
It was on 24th August, 2006, Amazon made the test version of Elastic computing cloud (EC2) public (Business Week 2006). Although the term “cloud computing “ was not in use at that time, this offer from Amazon had all the features which we associate with cloud computing today. So Amazon may be called the first cloud service vendor
