In the simplest terms, cloud computing means storing and accessing data and programs over the internet instead of your computers local hard drive.

The cloud is a metaphor for the internet that goes back to when people used diagram to represent the server-farm* infrastructure of the internet as a cloud that would eventually accept connections and hand out information as it floats.

Cloud computing is introducing a wave of new opportunities to help businesses become more flexible and agile by providing infrastructures and software* as services.

The cloud is the limit !

Cloud computing traces its roots back to 60 years.

In the 1950s, organizations began to use a developing and complex system of mainframe computers. At the time mainframe computers* were huge and very expensive.

It is John McCarthy that created the theory of time-sharing of sharing computing time* among an entire group of users.

Thw theory helped companies get the most out of computing time and it also made it possible for small companies that couldn’t afford to buy their own mainframes to have computing time.

As technology evolved, the idea of cloud computing moved ahead. In the mid-60s, J.C.R. Licklider* came up with an idea for an interconnected system of computers.

He envisioned a world where everyone would be connected to have the ability to access specific programs and data regardless where the access point might be located; this is known today as cloud computing

4 years later, this idea helped Bob Taylor and Larry Roberts to develop ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) known as the predecessor of the Internet.

ARPANET was the first network to allow digital sources to be shared among computers that were not in the same physical location.