The article is very confusingly written. Maybe AI? It's conflating "cloud" hosting (AWS, etc) with renting hosting infrastructure (which includes the cloud, but also things we don't refer to as "cloud", like dedicated servers, VPS services, and shared hosting).

This paragraph makes it sound like Amazon were the first company to allow renting their servers:

As companies such as Amazon matured in their own ability to offer what’s known as “software as a service” over the web, they started to offer others the ability to rent their virtual servers for a cost as well.

but Linux-based virtual servers have been a thing for 20+ years or so, first with Linux-VServer then with OpenVZ. Shared servers in general date back to the mainframes of the 60s and 70s.

Similarly, this paragraph makes it sound like the only two choices are either to use "the cloud" or to run your own data center:

Cloud computing enables a pay-as-you-go model similar to a utility bill, rather than the huge upfront investment required to purchase, operate and manage your own data centre.