[romaniv]

You can do a lot of the things you describe here with VPS (Virtual Private Servers). You get root access, you don't manage hardware, you often receive some virtualization benefits (images, snapshots). Does that count as "Cloud Computing"?

[jedsmith]

Definitely. Another term for mostly the same thing, in my book. I talked about this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2340734

VPS providers give you the tools, cloud providers give you the tools and a few finished products with less flexibility. You can use VPS as part of a cloud implementation, just like you can use dedicated servers as part of a cloud implementation, too.