Over the last several years we have heard a lot about the cloud: How easy it is to move business applications to the cloud; how IT departments are making this part of their strategic business plans; and the different initiatives coming about on how to save companies money and gain efficiencies. IT is now able to off load hardware and software administrative and resource overhead to hosting providers. This is empowering them to not only concentration on, but to be a PART of, strategic technology planning efforts for their organizations. This is an overall benefit to the organization, and I believe an unexpected but welcomed result of the cloud movement.