The word cloud has been commonplace in the industry and marketplace for over a decade. In its modern usage, it was first used in August of 2006, when Eric Schmidt of Google used it to describe an emergent new model (Source: Technology Review). However, now thanks to a, then, little-known company called Amazon Web Services (AWS), it has become immensely famous.
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Did you know? Amazon started work on its cloud in the year 2000; the key years in its development were 2003, 2004, and 2006. In 2004, the AWS, or web services at the time, were simply a group of disparate APIs and not a full-blown IaaS/PaaS service as it is today. The first service to be launched in 2003 was a Simple Queue Service (SQS) and then later, S3 and EC2 were added. In 2006, the cloud as we know it today gained popularity.
Once the term cloud computing became a part of common IT parlance, there was no dearth of definitions. Almost everyone had something to sell, and added their own spin on the terminology.
In this chapter, we will attempt to decipher this different terminology in relation to the definitions of the different clouds.
If you are wondering why this is important, it is to make and maintain the clarity of context in future chapters, as new concepts emerge and are commingled in the grand scheme of architecting the hybrid cloud.
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Did you know?The term cloud computing was first used in 1996, by a group of executives at Compaq to describe the future of the internet business. - Technology Review
In the remaining part of the chapter, we take a look at different definitions of the cloud and the different products used.