What is the difference between cloud computing and traditional IT infrastructure?

Cloud computing rents resources on-demand from a provider; traditional IT owns and operates physical hardware in private data centers.

• Cost model — cloud is opex (pay-as-you-go); traditional is capex (buy servers upfront, depreciate).

• Scalability — cloud scales in minutes via Auto Scaling; traditional requires procurement cycles (weeks to months).

• Time-to-market — cloud lets you ship in days; traditional requires data-center build-out.

• Maintenance — cloud provider handles hardware, networking, hypervisor; traditional needs an ops team for everything.

• Global reach — cloud spans 33+ Regions; traditional limited to where you build.

Why startups go cloud-first: no upfront capex, infinite scale, and global launch in hours.