The story goes that back in January 1996 US Patent 5,485,455 was filed containing a diagram with a cloud-like drawing representing a network.
Later in the same year another US Patent, no. 5,790,548 was filed which had a diagram that looked even more cloud-like.
The story continues that in 1996 a Compaq document may have been the first time the term was used in any kind of official capacity. By 2006 Amazon Web Services launched its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) which would help lead to the more widespread use of the term Cloud. Of course, whatever the true origins of the term are, it seems to most people that “The Cloud” is a network of computers that are “Out there somewhere.”
Cloud hosting, like a Virtual Private Server (VPS), is based on the virtualization of a server so that more than one user can be hosted on a single piece of hardware. Unlike a VPS, in Cloud Hosting the server load can be shared by multiple hardware devices across a network which can be situated anywhere in the world.
As with all types of hosting it is important that the user picks the best option for their circumstances. Cloud Hosting can provide a new business with a low-cost solution to hosting their website and supplying more resources as it receives more traffic.