In August 2013, The Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC) Director challenged that ARCIC could save big dollars if we could put OneSAF “in the cloud� in the Army Battle Lab Collaborative Simulation Environment (BLCSE). What seemed like a simple technical migration was actually a significant change in the way simulations would be structured and operated within a major distributed simulation environment (Battle Lab Collaborative Simulation Environment – BLCSE). While typical distributed simulation environments use either the High Level Architecture or Distributed Interactive Simulation protocols to exchange data between federates, a cloud environment seeks to remove as much of these data exchanges, and the resulting network infrastructure and latency, as possible. Software as a Service (SaaS) is the push of the DoD Cloud Computing strategy, and Simulation becomes the Software being provided as a service within cloud simulation. This paper details a simulation cloud testbed and several technical evaluations conducted to determine Simulation as a Service within the DoD Cloud Computing Strategy. It provides lessons learned and practical planning steps for the migration of a distributed simulation network into a community cloud environment with particular attention to the intricacies of establishing a robust Virtual Machine simulation environment. The authors also address the technical architecture problems associated with cloud computing, community issues of network redesign and the DoD Information Assurance Program (DIACAP) as well as the resource investment and cost benefit analysis for distributed workstations vice central blade servers. The more demanding configuration management and configuration control issues of simulations in the cloud, providing Modeling and Simulation as a service, are also addressed. The paper is based on an IRAD simulation cloud testbed and a series of distributed technical tests demonstrating SaaS over an Army secure simulation network.