When we talk about "the cloud," our language betrays a fundamental misunderstanding.

When we talk about “the cloud,” our language betrays a fundamental misunderstanding. At its core, cloud computing is the transformation of computing power from a product you buy into a utility you rent, much like electricity or water.  

The story begins long before the modern internet. In the 1960s, computer scientists envisioned a future where computation may someday be organized as a public utility. However, the technology of the time, massive mainframes, gave way to the personal computer revolution of the 1980s and ‘90s. During this era, you owned the box, you installed the software, and you were responsible for its maintenance.  

The internet boom of the late ‘90s reconnected these systems, but it wasn’t until the launch of services like Amazon Web Services (AWS), that the utility model truly arrived. Companies realized they had massive excess computing capacity in their data centres and could rent it out to others. Suddenly, a startup didn’t need to buy a server; they could rent a slice of one for pennies........

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