Strange Clouds
Note to Readers:
As the author of this article, I am deeply committed to maintaining the highest standards of integrity and transparency in my work. I want to clarify that while I utilized ChatGPT for gathering accurate historical dates and key achievements related to Cloud Computing, the writing and sentence formation in this article are entirely my own. No part of the below article was generated or written by ChatGPT or any other AI tool.
I believe in the power of human creativity and intellect, and this article is a testament to that belief. Thank you for taking the time to read, and I hope you find the insights provided both informative and thought-provoking.
If you’re an NFL fan, you might have seen it. The commercial that shows in-game NFL highlights with statistics and probabilities followed by a guy saying, “If AWS can do this for the NFL, imagine what it can do for your business.” Meanwhile, “Hypnotize” by Biggie Smalls is playing in the background. This is an awesome commercial, but I never precisely understood the actual service that was being marketed. If you’ve seen this commercial, then you’ve been pitched Amazon’s cloud computing service. AWS, or Amazon Web Services, is Amazon’s version of the cloud. In Q3 2023, AWS brought in $23.1 billion in quarterly revenue, or roughly 16% of Amazon’s total quarterly revenue in Q3. In addition to the cloud’s positive impact on Amazon’s bottom line, several other companies are benefitting as well, and the need for their cloud services is only growing.
At the end of 2023, it was estimated that there were approximately 5.3 billion internet users in the world. That’s about 65% of the world’s population. From that perspective, the stat isn’t very compelling. When you flip it on its head, you’ll realize that 35% of the world’s population is still not actively using the internet - roughly 4 out of every 10 people. With just 65%, the amount of circulating data is already insane. As the 35% make their way over, the amount of data is going to get even crazier. It is estimated that the total volume of global data will be in the range of over 200 zettabytes by 2025. I tried to create an analogy that would depict this unbelievable amount of data, relating the 200 zettabytes to an amount of a particular storage device that we’re all familiar with. In the end, I settled with the iPhone, but the equivalent 1.5 trillion iPhones is still hard to visually wrap our heads around. Given the unfathomable amount of data that is on its way, we have no choice but to turn to the cloud.
Origins of The Cloud
The history of cloud computing can be separated into two parts: the introduction of the broader concept in the 1960’s and the commercialization of cloud computing in the early 2000’s.
J.C.R Licklider and John McCarthy are two of the most well-recognized pioneers in the field of cloud computing. In the early 1960’s, J.C.R Licklider, a psychologist and computer scientist, introduced the concept of an “Intergalactic Computer Network,” or in English, a cloud. John McCarthy, as stated in my previous article on AI, is coined as the father of artificial intelligence. In addition to McCarthy’s significant contribution to the field of AI, he also played a pivotal role in the development of the foundations for cloud computing.
In the early 2000’s, companies began making money from the cloud and selling their services for profits. In 1999, Salesforce.com was founded, marking a change in the way applications were delivered to customers. This pivoted from the application delivery method where products such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and others were physically installed on machines using CD’s, hard drives, and other physical storage devices. Today, downloading apps from the App Store, Google Play, or the Internet is straightforward, and we can thank the cloud for that. Amazon Web Services (AWS) was founded in 2006 and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) followed in 2008. Subsequently, Windows Azure was founded in 2008, which was later renamed to Microsoft Azure in 2010. Each company had their own reasons for investing in the cloud. Amazon needed a data solution for their giant e-commerce platform, Google for their world-renowned search engine, and Microsoft for virtual application installation capabilities, most notably Microsoft 365. While each cloud provider had different business models, all had an ever-expanding need for storage capacity. To fit these storage needs, each company began investing into data centers and soon began selling their unused storage capacity (among additional services) to customers (businesses).
Becoming AZ-900 Certified
Disclaimer: I used to think that the cloud was some sort of revolutionary technology where data could be stored in the air. It turns out, however and after extensive research, that you can’t store data in the air. Still, like with any other data, it must be storage on some type of physical storage device. Many companies market their cloud services as “serverless computing.” In reality, there must always be a server somewhere in the picture. With cloud computing, providers such as AWS and Azure are in control of the servers, which gives the impression of “serverless computing.” Recently, I obtained Microsoft’s AZ-900 certification, which is Microsoft’s cloud fundamentals certification. In the process, I built a small application and connected it to the cloud. In doing so, I learned how to seamlessly integrate my cloud hosted application with GitHub as I integrated CI/CD pipelines through GitHub Actions using YAML. This gave me the ability to push my application to a GitHub repository and Azure at the same time. As a developer, you’ll know how convenient this is to be able to update the remote repository and your cloud-hosted application simultaneously.
The Cloud Now
The cloud is often seen merely as a giant storage container. While it is, the services AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform go far beyond storage. The cloud providers of today offer a wide range of services. These services enhance the applications that businesses use to interact with their customers, thus, enhancing the overall business. Among these services include cybersecurity, AI, machine learning, and as depicted in the AWS NFL commercial, application-based data and analytics insights to help businesses make data-driven decisions.
As it stands, the biggest players in the field are Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. At the end of 2023, the big 3 made up about 2/3 of the entire cloud ecosystem. AWS has majority market share with 32%, followed by Microsoft Azure with 22% and GCP with 11%. Alibaba’s, IBMs, and Salesforce cloud all follow with about 3-5% individual market share. AWS has held the reigns for almost two decades, but Microsoft Azure is gaining traction while simultaneously eating AWS market share. In Q3 2023, Azure saw 29% growth, which was trailed by Google Cloud Platform’s 22% and AWS 12%. On January 30, 2024, both Google and Microsoft reported Q4 earnings in which GCP and Azure saw growth of 25% and 30%, respectively. Needless to say, Azure's growth continues. Amazon presents Q4 earnings on February 1, 2024, and all eyes will be on their cloud growth.
While GCP has been impressive, Azure continues its unheralded growth, which can be attributed to two main factors. For one, Microsoft supports the underlying infrastructure used to fuel OpenAI and their various ChatGPT models. Because of Microsoft’s influence on ChatGPT, other companies are looking at Azure to forge the transition of AI into their business. In addition to Microsoft’s AI services, they also have a ton of market share for products within the software development community. Among these products are GitHub, a developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage and share their code. Microsoft purchased GitHub for $7.5 billion in 2018. In addition, Microsoft’s text editor and integrated development tools Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio are popular within the software development community. At the end of the day, Microsoft is providing the tools necessary for a seamless software development experience. If you use Apple products, you’re likely to have an entire suite of them because they all work so well together. The same thing is happening within the developer community, which is a good reason why Microsoft Azure is gaining popularity.
The Clouds Future
Back in 2017, it was estimated that the valuation of the cloud computing industry was $145 billion. By 2027, it’s expected that the industry's value will reach $1.24 trillion, a staggering 9x increase in 10 years. This meteoric rise in cloud computing can predominantly be attributed to the rise of the internet and the increased adoption of AI. Subsequently, these two factors introduce the need for larger storage capacities. With this increased need for storage comes the need for a bigger and better storage infrastructure which comes in the form of bigger and better data centers. With the added data centers comes the need for additional cooling and power, which cost a lot of money and churn through a lot of energy. While we must continually seek new ways to improve the performance of data centers, cloud computing, believe it or not, is much more efficient than on-site approaches to storage. Think of it like a city train, which uses a significantly lower number of resources than a congested city full of individual cars.
At the end of the day, the cloud is providing a phenomenal service and is doing an even better job at maintaining its carbon footprint. In 2018, Microsoft conducted a study in partnership with WSP, a Canadian environmental consulting agency, concluding that “When renewable energy is taken into account, carbon emissions from Azure Compute (Microsoft Azure) are 92-98% lower than traditional on-site data centers.” As stated in the study, this reduction in carbon footprint can be attributed to 4 main factors: IT equipment efficiency, IT operational efficiency, data center infrastructure efficiency, and Microsoft’s investment in renewable electricity such as wind farms. In addition to Microsoft’s efforts, Google and Amazon are also making great efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of their cloud services. In fact, Amazon was the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy for the fourth year in a row (2019-2023). All in all, cloud computing is heading in the right direction, and the biggest players in the industry are ensuring that the increased adoption doesn’t necessarily come with an increased carbon footprint.
Getting Started
If you're developer or just want to see what the cloud is all about, Microsoft offers a $200 free trial for first time users where you have 30 days to use the $200. After the 30 days is over, the credit goes away, and Microsoft halts all services. In addition, they offer students a free $100 offer that, unlike the $200 credit, doesn’t expire.
Microsoft also provides great tools for getting started with Azure. Microsoft Learn, for example, gives you interactive learning paths to develop cloud knowledge and skills. In addition, Microsoft has great spokespeople, such as John Savill, who provide phenomenal Azure courses on YouTube. Microsoft also has virtual tours of their data centers and a video series called “Cloud Stories” which aims at showing the way in which the cloud is impacting some of the world’s most influential companies.
I hope you enjoyed the read and were able to get something from it. As always, thanks for reading, and good luck.