Recently I was in NY at the AWS Summit and heard of about the company Kris described below.  You can view the slides from the presentation at the link below. In short, 50,000 core cycle computing cost this company $4,828 per hour.  This is how AWS is changing the way we think about business and what is possible for us to accomplish.

http://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/aws-customer-presentation-cycle-computing-aws-summit-2012-nyc

Jeff