By No Jitter
Publication Date: 2026-05-06 16:54:00
Early in the 2000s the race to the cloud began.
Before it was called the “cloud” it was just “renting” software or server space over the internet, a business model popularized by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the early to mid 2000s. The financial crisis in 2008 caused many companies to consider the pay-as-you-go model adopted by the cloud, reducing “CapEx”, paying for expensive servers upfront, in favor of “OpEx”.
By 2010, almost all vendors felt the need to have a cloud offering, causing many to adopt the term “private cloud”, which I argued was not really a cloud offering in “A Cloud for One is Just Smoke.”
By 2011, “cloud computing” became a household name, and during Gartner’s 2011 Symposium, Peter Sondergaard (then Senior VP at Gartner), officially advised CIOs and IT Leaders to adopt a “cloud first” strategy.
By 2012, “Cloud computing” topped Gartner’s list of “Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends”.
