Not so long ago, having a computer that was connected to another one was a very big deal. That was at the very beginning of the network. The next stage that followed concentrated on increasing the number of connections and nodes (PCs). It was with the exponential growth of that number that what we today know as the internet was born. After all, that is what the internet is: a very big connection of computers.

Once accessibility to the internet had started taking off, it was time to start solving the internet’s performance issues. As computer use increased, the need for faster, secure and reliable access to data became a necessity. Although the main focus in those early days was in improving the performance of the individual computer or server, vast technological advances were made in the networking environment too.

 But soon everyone realized that one lagging computer, server or network access point could become a bottleneck for the whole network during data transfer. The strategy of empowering only one part of the network was bound to fail at some point. That was when the idea of optimizing all of the parts together was born. It was called cloud computing.

Cloud computing is the concept where people can log on to the internet (called the cloud) and access their data as if they were logging on to their own servers or computers. In other words people can log on to the internet and access one or all of three things: a designated server space (infrastructure) to store and retrieve data, the data itself or run applications that are found on the hosts.

The advantage of cloud computing was obvious to all. Companies could reach a far broader market by hosting and running their applications on their own hosts and allowing people to access them. That was better than asking for the customer to download the applications which meant having to bother about time, hardware and expense costs. It also allowed the clients to run whatever applications without needing to worry about having an IT department. All IT support regarding things the like data, hardware scaling and security became the burden of the hosts. And that cut the costs of supporting a whole IT department for the clients; all they needed to worry about was having internet access.

There are very good examples of what the future of computing will look like on sites that advertise online operating systems; some of them have even got amazing showpieces that can be tested for free. It doesn’t feel any different than working on one’s own computer.  Some even boast applications that people usually pay a lot of cash for.

 The future of computing is literally taking off – into the clouds.