Question

Difficulty: EasyUnderstand concepts of cloud economics

A marketing company launches promotional websites that are only active for a few weeks at a time. Instead of purchasing physical servers to host these websites, the company hosts them on AWS and pays only for the resources consumed during the campaigns. Which of the following cloud economics benefits is demonstrated in this scenario?

  1. Trading upfront capital expenses for variable operating expensesAnswer
  2. B
    Trading variable operating expenses for upfront capital expenses
  3. C
    Eliminating all operating expenses by using physical on-premises servers
  4. D
    Using dynamic scaling to convert variable costs into capital expenses

Answer

Trading upfront capital expenses for variable operating expenses
The correct answer is correct because purchasing physical servers requires upfront investment, which is a capital expense (CapEx). Moving to AWS allows the company to pay only for resources consumed on an ongoing basis, shifting these costs to variable operating expenses (OpEx). This directly represents the benefit of trading capital expenses for variable expenses.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the financial model of purchasing physical servers.
Purchasing physical servers requires significant upfront investment, which represents a Capital Expense (CapEx).
To understand the baseline on-premises cost model.
2
Analyze the financial model of paying for AWS resources on demand.
Paying only for virtual resources while they are active represents a variable Operating Expense (OpEx).
To identify how cloud services are billed.
3
Compare the transition between the two models.
The company trades the high upfront CapEx of buying servers for the flexible, variable OpEx of cloud resources.
To determine the cloud economics concept demonstrated.

Key Concept

Trading capital expenses for variable expenses
Estimated Time:45s
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