Amazon played a pivotal role in the development of cloud computing following the dot-com bubble. Amazon modernised its data centres which has been using just ten percent of their capacity at one point in time! This sizeable internal inefficiency was to be remedied by the new cloud architecture which would eradicate all inefficiency and allow new features to be added quickly. In 2006, Amazon initiated a massive re-development effort to provide cloud computing to external customers through launching the Amazon Web Service. Eucalyptus became the very first open-source platform for the deployment of private clouds in 2008.
OpenNebula took this further in 2008 by becoming the first open-source software for the deployment of hybrid and private clouds.
In the middle of 2008, Gartner recognised the opportunities cloud hosting platforms offered. Gartner saw the opportunity cloud computing had “to shape the relationship among consumers of IT services, those who use IT services and those who sell them”. Gartner realized that: “organizations are switching from company-owned hardware and software assets to per-use service-based models” thus “the projected shift to cloud computing…will result in dramatic growth in IT products in some areas and significant reductions in other areas”.