Tracing the Roots of Cloud Computing: From ENIAC to AWS

Many people think that former Google CEO Eric Schmidt first introduced the term “cloud computing” at the SES San Jose conference on August 9, 2006, but Amazon had already launched its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service earlier that year.

The story of cloud computing actually begins much earlier. In 1946 the ENIAC became the world’s first general‑purpose electronic computer, followed by the Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) which, although not programmable, preceded ENIAC.

In 1955 John McCarthy at MIT proposed time‑sharing, allowing multiple users to share a single computer. In 1959 Christopher Strachey presented a paper on time‑sharing in large fast computers, coining the concept of virtualization.

By 1961 McCarthy introduced the idea of Utility Computing, envisioning computing as a public utility similar to electricity. This inspired the MAC (Multiple Access Computing) project funded by DARPA, which aimed to develop a system for multiple simultaneous users – a precursor to modern cloud and virtualization.

The MAC project led to the Multics operating system (1965), the first virtual machine system CP‑40/CMS (1965), and eventually Unix (1969). The same year, ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet, was created, completing the three foundational technologies of cloud computing: operating systems for resource management, virtualization, and network connectivity.

Part 2 – Grid Computing and the Revival of Cloud Concepts

During the 1970s‑80s the focus shifted to PCs, and the utility‑computing vision faded. In 1996 Compaq executives revived the term “cloud computing.” By 1997 Ramnath K. Chellappa gave the first academic definition, describing cloud computing as a model where the computing boundary is determined by economics rather than technology.

Late‑1990s milestones included InsynQ’s on‑demand services (1997), VMware’s introduction of x86 virtualization (1998), HP’s public‑computing division (1998), LoudCloud’s IaaS platform (1999), and Salesforce.com’s SaaS model (1999).

Part 3 – Amazon and Google Bring Cloud Computing to the Masses

In 2002 Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS), initially offering free integration of Amazon.com functionality. By 2006 AWS released S3 (Simple Storage Service) and EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud), establishing a dominant cloud infrastructure.

Meanwhile Google published seminal papers on GFS (2003), MapReduce (2004), BigTable (2005), and Chubby (2006), laying the groundwork for its own cloud services. In 2006 Google engineer Christopher Bishop proposed “cloud computing” to CEO Eric Schmidt, leading to the Google 101 program and the formal adoption of the term.

These developments marked the true birth of cloud computing, which has since become a fundamental layer for modern IT.