Background

Simply put, cloud-based computing refers to a process in which data and various applications are stored on the server and delivered to the client upon request, as opposed to being stored on the hard-disk of that client’s PC. As noted on epic.org, “cloud computing is an evolution from…previous efforts at shared computing” (Clifford, 2010, “Background”, para. 4). These previous methods of shared computing include everything from early stages of the internet to local area networks. Basically, any system which allows multiple users to access the same data from different access points falls under the heading of shared computing.

An early pioneer in “commercial and scientific infrastructure cloud computing initiatives” was Amazon Web Services (Rochwerger et al, 2009, p.12). In 2006, Amazon Web Services announced the beta version of its Elastic Compute Cloud service, otherwise known as Amazon EC2 (Barr, 2006, para. 1). The first service of its kind, EC2 allowed users to tap into computing power on an as-needed, pay-per-hour of use basis (Barr, 2006, para 2). This is an early version of cloud-based computing as we know it today.