The Birth Of The Cloud

Cloud computing is believed to have been invented by Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider in the 1960s with his work on Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) to connect people and data from anywhere at any time.

Licklider is particularly remembered for being one of the first to foresee modern-style interactive computing and its application to all manner of activities; and as an Internet pioneer with an early vision of a worldwide computer network long before it was built. He formulated the earliest ideas of a global computer network in August 1962 at Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), in a series of memos discussing the “Intergalactic Computer Network” concept. These ideas contained almost everything that the Internet is today, including cloud computing.

Robert Taylor, founder of Xerox PARC noted, “most of the significant advances in computer technology including the work at Xerox PARC were simply extrapolations of Lick’s vision. They were not really new visions of their own. So he was really the father of it all”.

In 1983, CompuServe offered its consumer users a small amount of disk space that could be used to store any files they chose to upload.

In 1989 Sir Tim Berners Lee laid out his vision for what would become the web.

In 1994, AT&T launched PersonaLink Services, an online platform for personal and business communication and entrepreneurship. The storage was one of the first to be all web-based, and referenced in their “You Will” commercials.

In 2006, Amazon Web Services, introduced their cloud storage service AWS S3.

The Cloud is now one of technologies most used buzzwords.

Cloud will provide the digital infrastructure of tomorrow’s cities, where an estimated 6 billion of the world’s population will live by 2045. Driverless cars, smart elevators, drone taxis and power plants — all will be safer and better managed, thanks to the cloud’s ability to store and analyze data. Regardless of industry or size, all companies need digital infrastructure to support their business operations. But cloud will change ICT from a support system into a production system. For example, OpenDesk, a London-based company, uploads furniture designs to the cloud and lets customers download the designs and manufacture the furniture locally. This lowers shipping and inventory costs, while reducing the company’s carbon footprint.  

Whether you were around in the dial-up era of Compuserve and AOL or born in the Cloud you cannot but be in awe of Licklider, Berners and the Internet pioneers. Their vision, innovations and imagination has brought us to where we are now and who knows where in the future.