Question

An online retailer runs its e-commerce platform in an on-premises data center. During annual holiday sales, traffic spikes to nearly ten times the normal load for a few weeks, but demand returns to baseline the rest of the year. The IT team currently buys enough hardware to survive the peak, leaving most servers idle for the majority of the year. Which characteristic of cloud computing most directly addresses this specific problem?

Accepted Answer

Scalability, allowing resources to automatically expand during the holiday spike and contract afterward so capacity matches actual demand

Answer

The shared responsibility model, which transfers all security duties to the cloud provider

Answer

The software-as-a-service model, which delivers ready-to-use applications through a browser

Answer

A capital expenditure model, which lets the retailer purchase hardware in advance for predictable budgeting