Simple answer is YES.
Amazon just recently announced the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud concept. The VPC enables the extension of an existing LAN to the cloud using a standard VPN solution.
To put it simply, corporates can now enforce IT security policies on dedicated cloud resources.
From Wiki:
Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them.
One of the more obvious uses for cloud computing is DRP or BCM solutions.
However, one must consider the pros and cons of using cloud computing for such purposes. The good is that cloud computing makes DRP solutions a commodity. Unlimited computing resources are available with zero setup with an attractive payment model.
The less good is that the availability of the cloud computing providers affects the availability of your DRP solution (I think this is the case with every DRP vendor) . There are many aspects to consider and you can also read many articles about the issue.
However, if you require an IT infrastructure that is scalable, available, reliable and the service level that vendors such as Amazon and Google are providing is sufficient in your eyes, cloud computing is definitely an attractive DRP solution alternative.
From Amazon website:
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers. Amazon EC2’s simple web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon’s proven computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by allowing you to pay only for capacity that you actually use. Amazon EC2 provides developers the tools to build failure resilient applications and isolate themselves from common failure scenarios.
EC2 is a web service. It's not a lease program for real branded (or non-branded) servers. Amazon enables EC2 users to use a service that performs computing tasks on a computing unit which delivers the same performance as a real server. The virtual computing unit is virtual. The computing units are usually part of a much stronger machine that manages several computing units at the same time
From Wiki:
An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is a pre-built package of software which can be used to create or instantiate a virtual machine within the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. An AMI forms the basic unit of deployment for services delivered using EC2 and typically includes the operating system (for example Linux, UNIX, or Windows) and additional software necessary to deliver a service.
From Wiki:
Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) provides block level storage volumes for use with Amazon EC2 instances. Amazon EBS volumes are off-instance storage that persists independently from the life of an instance. Amazon Elastic Block Store provides highly available, highly reliable storage volumes that can be attached to a running Amazon EC2 instance and exposed as a device within the instance. Amazon EBS is particularly suited for applications that require a database, file system, or access to raw block level storage.
CloudFront is a web service by Amazon that resembles in functionality to a CDN (Content Delivery Network). Amazon supports 16 different locations worldwide for edge content distribution. You upload your content once and your users will retrieve your content from a location which is closest to them. This obviously increases content delivery performance. The entire infrastructure is managed and supported by Amazon.
From Amazon website:
Amazon CloudFront is a web service for content delivery. It integrates with other Amazon Web Services to give developers and businesses an easy way to distribute content to end users with low latency, high data transfer speeds, and no commitments.
From Amazon website:
Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers. Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers.