In cloud computing, what is rapid elasticity?

Rapid elasticity is a fundamental characteristic of cloud computing, enabling the automatic scaling of computing resources (like CPU, memory, or storage) up or down to meet fluctuating demand. This ensures that resources are always available when needed, preventing performance degradation during peak loads, and are released when not needed, optimizing cost. Tenant control and monitoring of resource usage describes measured service, where resource consumption is tracked. Pooling resources for multitenant use on demand refers to resource pooling, where multiple users share a common pool of resources. Tenant self-service provisioning of resources is on-demand self-service, allowing users to provision resources without human interaction. While all are cloud characteristics, only automatic scaling addresses rapid elasticity.