🔙 Throwback Thursday for 2024-09-12
Reflecting on my early career, Intel, and the rise / fall of the web hosting boom.
Telecom and the .com boom (and bust) days were part of my early career. 25 years ago, I was able to participate in an early approximation of a “cloud” by Intel that was called an Application Service Provider (ASP).
Yes. Intel.
In late 1999, Intel got into the web hosting business by launching Intel Online Services (IOS).
See if this part sounds familiar:
Second-Generation Hosting
Intel Online Services’ main focus is its second-generation hosting, in which standard, hardware and software is integrated, validated, and managed by Intel Online Services. Using this approach, Intel Online Services provides not just the building, power and network connection - called co-location hosting - but also the servers, operating system software and basic applications. By providing and managing this second-generation hardware and software platform, Intel Online Services can offer a higher degree of predictability and reliability. This can also reduce the cost for customers, since they don’t have to hire IT staffs, buy computers, configure software, or carry out other costly tasks. Intel Online Services, Inc., is an Intel subsidiary that intends to be a leading supplier of hosted Internet services, business applications, and e-Commerce services worldwide.
Source: Intel News Release, 2000
By 2000, IOS announced it would allocate $1B to bring 10 Internet Data Centers (IDCs) online.
By early 2002, IOS had signed customers with iconic brands such as Sony, eBay, BP, Tour de France, EMI, MSN, American Stock Exchange, Discovery Channel, TLC and Animal Planet, BBC, and others with partners like EMC that provided technology for hosting “multiple terabytes of storage” that seem rather quaint today but was bleeding edge a quarter century ago.
However, life moves fast and so did the .com boom. By late 2002, IOS was no more.
Of course “cloud” became wildly successful. Even conservative projections easily cross over into the trillions ($T) for the “cloud” market.
Today, A.I. is taking up a lot of the conversations about “cloud”.
Lately, Intel has apparently been finding what else to shed.
https://www.techmeme.com/240912/p8#a240912p8
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