From the Computer Utility to Cloud Computing - To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World - page 18

promotion. Whether it is the federal government's chief information ofi-
cer, NIST, or the National Science Foundation, which in 2012 announced
its own commitment to fund cloud-computing research, the goal is to
promote the cloud and not just to understand it. So along with the clear
deinition, NIST proclaims, “The Cloud Computing model offers the
promise of massive cost savings combined with increased IT agility. It is
considered critical that government and industry begin adoption of this
technology in response to dificult economic constraints” (NIST 2013).
The Early Cloud: The Computer Utility and Videotex
To deepen understanding of what cloud computing means, it is useful to
consider how it is both an extension of earlier forms of computer commu-
nication and, at least in scale, a new development in the use of information
technology. In the 1950s, the computer scientist Herb Grosch forecast a
world that would share computing resources so that no more than ifteen
data centers would be needed to meet the world's information needs. In
the 1960s, the concept of the computer utility emerged when Stanford
IT expert John McCarthy imagined “computation as a public utility” (C.
Ross 2012). This was formalized in 1966 with the publication of Douglas
Parkhill's widely read topic The Challenge of the Computer Utility . Why is
it useful to think of cloud computing as a utility? In part it is because some
specialists see the cloud as little more than an extension of the computer-
utility concept, once referred to as “time-sharing,” because usage time on
a central computer was shared by multiple users. For example, according
to Linthicum, “If you think you've seen this movie before, you are right.
Cloud computing is based on the time-sharing model we leveraged years
ago before we could afford our own computers. The idea is to share com-
puting power among many companies and people, thereby reducing the
cost of that computing power to those who leverage it. The value of time
share and the core value of cloud computing are pretty much the same,
only the resources these days are much better and more cost effective”
(cited in McKendrick 2013a).
Most people are familiar with public utilities for resources like roads,
water, and electricity, which provide services to the public over an
infrastructure that utilities manage and operate. They can be owned