14. From Consumers to Creators

Server, storage, and network virtualization served as the foundational technologies that enabled cloud computing back in the mid 2000s. Back then, it was a very different world from a technology perspective. High-speed broadband Internet access was readily available, but from fixed-line sources, and mobile telephones were still using GPRS and WAP, rendering them useful for email (with no attachments) and SMS text but little more. Not only were the technologies different, but looking back we see that the way businesses ran IT departments and how applications were delivered and how data was stored differed from today.

Back then, small and medium-size businesses (SMB) actually ran their own services, hosting them in ...

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