Benefits of cloud computing

I'm going to start this post as a place to build a running list of "benefits" of cloud computing.

Benefits of cloud computing can be broken down into several categories.  One of those are the "Business Benefits":
1. Almost zero upfront infrastructure investment
2. Just-in-time Infrastructure
3. More efficient resource utilization
4. Usage-based costing
5. Potential for shrinking the processing time
6. Virtually unlimited computation and storage

[http://www.webhostingunleashed.com/features/cloud-computing-benefits/]
1. Scalability
2. Easy implementation
3. Skilled practictioners
4. Frees up internal resources
5. Quality of service

[http://www.webhostingunleashed.com/features/essential-guide-cloud-computing/]
1. Access to data from any location with Internet access
2. No need for maintaining a physical storage device
3. No upfront capital expenditures for hardware
4. No ongoing costs for maintaining and upgrading storage facilities
5. Pay as you go
6. Can add or remove capacity based on real rather than projected storage needs
7. Alleviates burden on IT teams

Security Benefits
[http://cloudsecurity.org/2008/07/21/assessing-the-security-benefits-of-cloud-computing/]
1. Centralized Data
2. Incident Response / Forensics
3. Password assurance testing
4. Logging
5. Improve the state of security software
6. Secure Builds
7. Security testing

Another way to look at cloud computing is by comparing how you would use it compared to other services, such as with your own internal IT or with typical managed services (the way we thought of doing it in the late 90's early 2000's), and how it compares to the others in terms of both complexity and $$:

	Internal IT	Managed services	The cloud
Capital investment	Significant	Moderate	Negligible
On-going costs	Moderate	Significant	Based on Usage
Provisioning time	Significant	Moderate	None
Scalability	Limited	Moderate	Flexible
Staff expertise requirements	Significant	Limited	Moderate
Reliability	Varies	High	Moderate to High