The CLOUD
History The cloud sounds like some new fancy technology, but the truth is it is not. It is based on the same model as time sharing main frames used all the way back to the 1960 s. The only computers available then were very expensive main frame computers that researchers, universities, and business could not afford. So they shared them.
History Continued. The solution was companies that owned main frames and had extra computing hours would lease access to the main frame. The PC revolution ended some of that, but also provided a new way to connect to the main frame. The Internet eventually brought this need back as many companies and start ups found it easier to have their applications hosted on a ISP (Internet Service Provider).
Main Frame Dial Up (1960 s)
History Continued With the PC becoming widely available in the 1980 s hard core researchers still needed access to the main frame because PC s simply didn t have the power. But desktop applications like work and excel were also needed. The result is PC s would replace dumb terminals and connect to main frames in their place. This allowed for an early form of distributed computing.
History Continued (1980 s)
The Internet Boom (1990 s) Many people believe the internet was created in the early 90 s. But that is not true, the Graphical internet became available then, but the actual internet was created in the early 70 s as a US military project called the Arpanet. It was an exclusive network until the late 70 s when the military decide to split it into the arpanet that would remain private and the public internet.
The Internet Boom Because the early internet was character based and users had to know Unix commands to use it remained a play ground for academia, techies, etc. The graphically user interface (web browser) change all that and the internet became widely used.
The Graphical Internet The number of new startups and explosive growth in the internet caused greater demand for server support. Since many small companies and start ups didn t have the human resources to support servers and databases they opted for a hosted solution. This was a step in the direction of the Cloud and still built on the same business model as main frame time sharing.
Hosted ISP, ASP Hosted solutions known throughout the 90 s as Internet Service Provider (ISP). ISP originally were generate name for a server hosted else where that you remotely connect to using Unix commands like telnet or ssh (secure shell). Eventually it became obvious that most users using them to host web applications. Not as big as Amazon, but smaller companies conduction e-commerce.
Application Service Providers(ASP) The explosion of e-commerce led to the evolution of ISP into ASP. Really the main difference is that ASP including a lot typical applications to build web applications including Apache, Tomcat, PHP & Perl, Java, MySQL, etc. Out of this grew SaaS, Software as a Service. SaaS is really just a web application designed more for business then consumers.
Finally cloud computing. The culmination of over 50 years of networking Main frame time sharing (50 s, 60 s, 70 s) Add PC s to the above mixture. (80 s) The Graphical Internet with ISP s and ASP s. The Cloud (2000+). The cloud is more of a re-packing of existing technologies and re-marketing.
Cloud Computing
Cloud Database A cloud database is a database that typically runs on a cloud computing platform, such as Amazon EC2, GoGrid and Rackspace. There are two common deployment models: users can run databases on the cloud independently, using a virtual machine image, or they can purchase access to a database service, maintained by a cloud database provider. Of the databases available on the cloud, some are SQL-based and some use a NoSQL data model.
Cloud Database So you can see any database can be used on a cloud environment, not just NoSQL. Many big vendors are promoting Cloud Database including IBM, Oracle, Amazon, Microsoft (Azure). No SQL vendors including Mongo DB, Couch DB, Hadoop, Google, Amazon, Oracle.