Cloud computing is definitely a thing now, but it's not new and it's not even novel. Back when people were first learning about the Internet in the 1990s, every diagram that one saw showing how the Internet worked had a big cloud in the middle. That cloud represented the diverse links, routers, gateways, and protocols that passed traffic around in common, low-cost ways between one's local networks and other local networks. People have all been leaning on the cloud to connect individuals to each other for all these years. In this article, the author discusses why there is a sudden interest in "cloud computing" now and describes what has changed. The author stresses that the reason why some of the current hype about cloud computing is justified is that it opens doors to new possibilities. Using Amazon.com's Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) or similar services for short-term problem solving can be a great way to liberate one's tech staff from the limits imposed by local hardware and budgets. If one wants to do more than just try out cloud computing, the author suggests to do the math first, estimate costs carefully, and plan accordingly.