Cloud Security: A Comprehensive Guide to Secure Cloud Computing

Chapter 1. Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.

—–Winston Churchill

Cloud computing evokes different perceptions in different people. To some, it refers to accessing software and storing data in the "cloud" representation of the Internet or a network and using associated services. To others, it is seen as nothing new, but just a modernization of the time-sharing model that was widely employed in the 1960s before the advent of relatively lower-cost computing platforms. These developments eventually evolved to the client/server model and to the personal computer, which placed large amounts of computing power at people's desktops and spelled the demise of time-sharing systems.

In 1961, John McCarthy, a professor at MIT, presented the idea of computing as a utility much like electricity.^[1] Another pioneer, who later developed the basis for the ARPANET, the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, and precursor to the Internet, was J.C.R. Licklider. In the 1960s, Licklider promulgated ideas at both ARPA and Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), the high-technology research and development company, that envisioned networked computers at a time when punched card, batch computing was dominant. He stated, "If such a network as I envisage nebulously could be brought into operation, we could have at least four large computers, perhaps six or eight small computers, and a great assortment of disc files and magnetic tape units—not ...