The past couple of decades saw the business-centric concept of outsourcing services and the technology-centric notion of utility computing evolve along relatively parallel streams. When they finally met to form a technology landscape with a compelling business case and seismic impacts on the IT industry as a whole, it became evident that what resultantly was termed and branded as "cloud computing" was more than just another IT trend. It has become an opportunity to further align and advance the goals of the business with the capabilities of technology.