Storing data in the cloud using a Whitewater™ cloud storage gateway from Riverbed Technology overcomes what is becoming a serious challenge for IT departments: how to manage the vast, and ever-growing, amount of data that must be protected. Whitewater eliminates concerns about data security, data transmission speeds over the Internet, and data availability, while providing great flexibility and a favorable return on investment. Moving data to the cloud replaces the high costs of tape and disk storage systems with a pay-as-you-go cloud storage tier. This paper makes the business case for cloud storage, outlining where capital and operational costs can be eliminated or avoided by using the cloud for backup and archive storage.