We use AWS as a sort of developer playground — turning on a server to test app deployment, and execution with a variety of non production data, and then turning it off again.
We also use AWS as a host for our TFS. (because somehow our source code “isn’t production data” All in all it’s been great, and I would recommend it for corporate work, but that idea doesn’t seem to get any traction here. The business is very reluctant to put their data “outside the wire”
What’s missing from AWS, and its competitors, to make it a suitable enviornment for private coprorate use.
IMO EC2 is well suited for corporate use – as long as you back up all your critical data off site in case of an outage, which you’d want to do for internal systems anyway. The minimum level of security that Amazon enforces is well above what a lot of traditional hosting providers give you, and also above a lot of internal shops I’ve worked with. Since you have full access to the operating system, you can add in as many extra levels of security as you like.