Turbonomic Blog

Introduction

As we enter a new decade, I decided to take a look back at the history of cloud computing and how the space has evolved from the early 2000s to today.

This article is the first part of a blog series. This article will cover the 2000s decade (2000-2009), which marked the emergence of the cloud computing space.

The modern Cloud computing space enabled many of the innovative technologies and solutions we have seen over the last two decades.

Technically, concepts of cloud computing can be traced back to the 1960s - but to me, the origin story of the modern cloud computing can be attributed to Salesforce.com, which was founded in 1999 and later launched one of the first successful public Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings.

As cloud computing gained momentum during the mid-2000s, many organizations struggled to understand what exactly 'Cloud Computing' is. A memorable example is when Larry Ellison, the founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation at the time, shared his thoughts in 2008 on Cloud Computing (a must listen). While Larry Ellison’s provocative comments highlight his lack of understanding of cloud computing at the time, most people were in the same boat and did not fully realize its benefits yet either.

One of the contributors for the confusion was the common practice of ‘Cloudwashing,' where vendors took their legacy software solutions, made them accessible over the internet and marketed them as cloud solutions.

During and before re:Invent 2019, Amazon unveiled over 77 new product announcements and unique capabilities. AWS Compute Optimizer, one of the more interesting offerings was quietly announced through a blog on December 3rd.

Last week approx. 65,000 IT professionals and executives converged on to Las Vegas for the most significant cloud event in the world: AWS re:Invent. It is hard to describe the spectacle, noise, excitement, and energy at the event.

Like all major technology revolutions, the cloud brings with it the mysticism of new technology, the fear of the unknown, and the opportunity to master a whole new set of challenges. It can be awesome and scary at the same time- provisioning servers in minutes instead of months, automation that can replace whole teams, and whole new security attack vectors.

In my role, I have the privilege of meeting multiple enterprise customers and prospects every day, discussing their challenges and pains related to the management and control (or lack of) of their hybrid environments.

Many in the IT industry would label 2018 as the “Year of the Cloud Rush.”

The first half of this article presented an overview of serverless computing with AWS Lambda, including building, deploying, and testing AWS Lambda functions in an example Java application. In Part 2, you'll learn how to integrate Lambda functions with an external database, in this case DynamoDB. We'll then use the AWS SDK to invoke Lambda functions from our example Java application.

There are many variations on the definition of DevOps. The central theme of them all is that DevOps is used to increase the flow of value from idea to prototype, and from prototype to production. It’s a set of processes and behavioural patterns which change the way that development and operations (and hopefully security) teams communicate, interact, and move code through the application lifecycle.

Today’s CIO needs to be a change agent. Leading companies count on CIO’s to shift the value of IT from “keeping the lights on” to innovating. They are measured on impacting the differentiation of their company and its position in the marketplace.

The quest of the modern CIO is much different than it may have been in the not too distant past.  Recent years shows that more CIOs are leveraging and even demanding new IT operational models (e.g. Cloud, PaaS) to move from baseline operations to advancing the state of business through IT innovation.