> Until relatively recently, the cloud didn't exist.
Depends:
> IBM and other mainframe providers conducted this kind of business in the following two decades [after 1961], often referred to as time-sharing, offering computing power and database storage to banks and other large organizations from their worldwide data centers. To facilitate this business model, mainframe operating systems evolved to include process control facilities, security, and user metering.
[…]
> In 1998, HP set up the Utility Computing Division in Mountain View, CA, assigning former Bell Labs computer scientists to begin work on a computing power plant, incorporating multiple utilities to form a software stack. Services such as "IP billing-on-tap" were marketed. HP introduced the Utility Data Center in 2001. Sun announced the Sun Cloud service to consumers in 2000.
[…]
> In spring 2006 3tera announced its AppLogic service and later that summer Amazon launched Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud).
Until relatively recently, the cloud didn't exist.