Cloud Value & Benefits
The properties that make cloud worth adopting — the AWS value proposition, in glossary form.
| Term | What it means | Distinct from |
|---|---|---|
| Agility | Move fast: build, deploy, change in minutes | A business-speed benefit, not a runtime property |
| Elasticity | Capacity auto-matches demand, both directions | Tracks demand (vs HA which survives failure) |
| High Availability | Stays up through component failure | Survives failure (vs elasticity’s demand-matching) |
| Economies of Scale | AWS’s volume lowers your unit cost | Why prices fall; concrete cost terms live in Cloud Economics |
- Elasticity vs High Availability is the classic mix-up: demand vs failure.
- Agility is organizational speed; the other three are properties of the running system.