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Cloud Computing

             The term “ the cloud” is a common term in today’s world, but while many of use it, its still a mystery for many of us what it exactly is and how works. “The cloud,” or cloud computing has grown from being a promising business concept to one of the fastest growing segments of the IT industry (Popovic, 2010). It’s a phenomenon that has reshaped our whole understanding of how much of the world conducts businesses. Cloud computing can be described simply as the act of using remote servers over the Internet to store, process and manage information (Alijani, 2014). As appose to traditional methods, where information is kept and managed on a hard drive or on a server located on the user’s premise, cloud computing out weights old methods with many advantages. After realizing this its no surprise that in 2012,  “ 62% of survey respondents said increased collaboration with external partners is a key objective for adopting the cloud” (IBM Study, 2012)

             Even though most technologies have emerged in the last decade, cloud computing was actually initially developed in the 1950’s (Neto, 2014). How ever at first the technology was far from perfect and nowhere near applicable for use. Instead the cloud we know today was developed gradually. By the time we reached the 1970’s the development of Virtual Machines (VMs) and the use of VMware allowed us to execute one or more operating systems simultaneously in an isolated environment (Neto, 2014). This was taken a step farther in the 1990’s where telecommunication companies began to offer virtual private connections where before companies only offered single dedicated point-to-point data connections (Neto, 2014). This new method was cheaper because instead of having each user having an individual connection cite, companies now can share access to the same infrastructure (Neto, 2014). This new method is much cheaper, which allows prices to go down, allowing more users to use such products. Once applying these principles to network applications, we are beginning to recognize what we know as the cloud (Kerr, 2012). Now days the IT world is centered around managing mass quantities of data and by using these ideas to store, and manage data we finally see the emergence of formal cloud computing.