Sreeni Setty's Blog: Master Cloud Operative!

CLOUD COMPUTING! Why is it everyone is talking about it all of a sudden. For a feature/technology that has been in use since the sixties, we hear about it so loud and clear for the first time.

With the publicity and popularity given to it by Oracle, a layman is hearing about it and comprehending with the term Cloud Computing.

Cloud computing is the delivery of software and hardware as services via the internet. It has evolved through a number of phases which include grid and utility computing, application service provider (ASP), and software as a service (SaaS).

But the concept of delivering computing resources through a global network is rooted in the sixties. However it has reached masses only in the recent years since the revolution in the internet bandwidth and the recent evolution of Web 2.0.

Looking back at the major milestones…
· Salesforce.com (1999) – that pioneered the delivery of enterprise applications through a web.
· Amazon Web Services (2002) – that provided cloud based computation services and storage.
· Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud - EC2 (2006) – that allowed business to rent computers and run their own computer applications.
· IBM Cloud Box (2008) - custom built, Linux based rack servers for Web 2.0 and cloud computing companies
· Google Apps (2009) – that offered browser based enterprise applications.
· Microsoft Azure - cloud platform taking one step further into cloud operating system called Windows Azure
· and many other...

Oracle has done it in the biggest possible way, taking it further as - software as a service, platform as a service, infrastructure as a service.

Oracle has addressed the major concerns of cloud computing – the security and the managing of cloud services, through its Identity Management and Enterprise Manager.

Follow the Oracle sponsored Stark Expo 2010, the Stark Industries international technology exhibition that runs on Oracle Cloud Computing.