Origin of “The Cloud”
The terms cloud computing and “the cloud” seem to have gotten their origin in diagrams. When network engineers would draw their network infrastructure for documentation, they would draw clusters of servers as a cloud. Over time, the term “the cloud” evolved basically. It was just an easier way to refer to portions of the information system.
How does the cloud work?
The cloud is really a combination of different technologies working together. The need for the cloud arose when servers began to be bogged down with processing. In order to deal with this problem, network engineers and programmers began to come up with ways to shift processing loads to different servers. So, for example, if a server in Chicago was being bogged down with work then a portion of that work could be pushed to another server in New York. So, in this case, there were several technologies that made this possible.
Cloud Computing and Virtual Machines
Another leap that made cloud computing more accessible is VMs or virtual machines. This means that you could take a much larger computer and create smaller instances of computers within it. This allowed one machine the ability to be several servers at once. Combining this with load management and the internet, the cloud was born.