Much touted for many years without tangible results, cloud computing is becoming a concrete reality. If taken advantage of, the cost-reducing potential of moving large-scale business processes to the cloud is utterly staggering. Time and money once lost to storage, backup and recovery, software integration and access issues are fast becoming obviated. Startups will be vastly easier to launch and innovation will bloom as a result. More than an advantage, doing business on the cloud will quickly become a competitive necessity.