Between 2005 and 2010, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Alibaba and Tencent Cloud all launched a cloud computing service. This was followed swiftly by IBM, Oracle, Dell Technologies and Huawei. This proliferating interest amongst several major corporation in this new technological advancement can be attributed largely to the outstanding opportunity for success and increased revenue which resulted from the paradigm into the age of data and computing.

Cloud computing refers to the use of the cloud to store data and run software. The "cloud" refers to a building owned and managed by providers like Google or Amazon containing hundreds of servers. These servers are computers dedicated to a number of tasks, ranging from running applications to storing data. The implementation of cloud computing allows users , via the internet , to access the data and applications stored on these computers in the "cloud".

The cloud allows for a number of functionalities. There are three main ways consumers tend to use the Cloud. IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. IaaS (infrastructure as a service) is a form of cloud computing that supplies a number of services on-demand to users over the internet. It works via the cooperation of physical and virtual resources within the cloud to give the user the ability to run certain applications. IaaS provides three types of services - the computing power resources, networking facilities and storage capabilities. The IaaS servers can also be thought as virtual machines, which enable the user to have access to whatever GPUs, CPUs and HPCs they need. IaaS allows for the use of storage facilities that you don’t actually own on your site, but rather, that are stored in the cloud. The three main kinds of storage, object, block and file, are each used in different circumstances. For example, object storage is the most commonly used due to its versatility and scalability. Finally, It allows for cloud networking. This allows users to gain access to routers and switches via the use of APIs, specialist types of software, allowing them to program networking hardware that can access the internet virtuality.

Alternative services to IaaS are PaaS and SaaS. Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) providers support the user almost entirely with all infrastructure and configuration - more so than in IaaS (in which they are given the "bare" components) - and host everything in their data centre. While it provides less complex and intricate configuration, it allows customers to deploy their applications and websites to the web more quickly without having to build their own virtual infrastructure from "scratch". SaaS (software as a service) allows you to use a software that is hosted (run and stored) on the cloud as if it were installed on your own computer. It allows users to use software without the expense of owning the necessary computing power needed to run it.

The use of the cloud to run applications and computer infrastructure, that would have otherwise been installed onsite or locally, has been crucial to the IT industry as the 21st century has seen more global corporations established and expanding with the growing globalised market. The creation of the internet allowed for greater communication. This increased cooperation meant a rise in data and information being generated. Up until 2003, the total amount of data stored by humanity was about 5 billion gigabytes. This magnitude of data is now created every two days worldwide. The rising importance of data and our increasing dependence upon it has meant that organisations have begun to increasingly generate more and more information to sell, use or manipulate according to their needs. However, this would mean an increasing number of the collective buying their own hardware devices to store data, run their software on the web and organise a successful business. Such endeavours would require the constant purchase of hard drives - which can be rather expensive- and as the company grows, the money that would need to be spent to store industrial levels worth of information in sufficiently effective equipment would only increase. Evidently, services like AWS, which take a few hours to learn and handle all this heavy-work for you and provide a very favourable substitute to the more expensive alternative, have been increasingly more popular. This is largely reason for the extensive success of the cloud industry. However, the versatility and the impressive functionality the services provide are not the only reason for its success. It has allowed organisations and individuals to run software and equipment they may not have been able to realistically afford. The ability to run and train AI models using a GPU and block storage far more advanced, efficient and sophisticated than the ones you own at home or have readily available unlock the potential for technological advancement that may not have been possible before. The fact that such revolutionary technology has been made available at an affordable price has accelerated the progress in technological and software innovation while making it easier for the internet's capability in the form of applications and virtual operations to expand.

However, despite its success and obvious demand, the industry has seen a slowdown in recent quarters. Following the pandemic and the need to reduce costs, many companies have resorted to astutely cutting unnecessary computing power to save money as they look to pursue cheaper cloud service options. Furthermore, companies such as "HEY" have begun to move the opposite direction and return to owning their own infrastructure as a result of their increasing company size. The increasing cost of energy prices - needed to power their expansive facilities filled with computers - has meant that cloud providers such as google announced price increases of well over 50% in some services and up to 200% in others. This increase in pricing as a result of inflation is also detrimental to the providers as well as the consumers. The increasing competition as well the rising prices in hiring skilled workers to operate their systems and the cost of electricity and energy has meant that profit margins have become even smaller. The reduced profitability in the sector may raise eyebrows at its prospects of a profitable and success future.

Nonetheless, it is unlikely that such downfalls will be anything more than temporary for a multitude of reasons; The adoption of cloud services by millions of organisations makes it unlikely that its consumption will reduce without significant provocation in the future, mainly as a result of the fact that once applications and infrastructure has been moved to the cloud, it can be a long, difficult and expensive task to reverse it. The need to hire more labour to manage your data and infrastructure instead of using the facilities owned and managed by largely trustworthy conglomerates such as Amazon and Google, means that it is probable that cloud technology will continue to play an important role into the future.