The correct approach balances risk, cost, and business objectives. A full rewrite (B) is often prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. Simply using larger instances (A) ignores the root cause and increases long-term costs. Decoupling on-premises (D) adds significant delay without leveraging cloud-native tools. Option C is the pragmatic, phased approach recommended by cloud migration frameworks: assess, move a stable baseline, then iteratively improve (refactor or re-architect) in the cloud environment itself.

While technical control is a factor, the cloud service model is fundamentally a business decision. It determines who manages what (shared responsibility), impacts the speed of development and innovation (agility), influences staffing needs (ops vs. dev focus), and affects the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) beyond just resource costs. Option C captures this holistic, strategic view. Option B is an oversimplification of lock-in, and option D is factually incorrect as cost dynamics vary by use case.

Rapid Elasticity is the key characteristic that allows resources to be scaled out (and back in) quickly and automatically to match demand. This ensures performance during traffic spikes without requiring permanent over-provisioning, which aligns directly with cost-efficiency. While On-Demand Self-Service (C) enables provisioning, and Measured Service (B) enables pay-per-use, it is Rapid Elasticity that dynamically links the two to handle variable workloads effectively.

An SLA is a formal contract with business consequences. While RTO/RPO define the targets, the financial remedies (service credits) for missing those targets are what give the SLA teeth. They define the provider’s accountability and your compensation for downtime. Marketing claims (A) and brand reputation (C) are not contractual. Detailed technical steps (D) are typically part of runbooks or support documents, not the high-level business terms of an SLA.

In IaaS, the provider is responsible for security *of* the cloud (physical infrastructure, hypervisor, host OS). The customer is responsible for security *in* the cloud. This includes managing the guest OS, applications, data, and importantly, network security configuration like firewalls (security groups) and NACLs. Options A, B, and D are all responsibilities of the cloud provider.

The primary financial and operational benefit of PaaS is reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) through managed services. The provider handles routine administration, software patching, backups, and often high-availability setup. This reduces the need for specialized in-house DBA skills and labor costs. Licensing costs (A) may or may not be included. Performance (C) is not guaranteed and depends on configuration. Granular tuning (D) is often more limited in PaaS versus IaaS, where you have full OS access.

A dedicated, private network connection like AWS Direct Connect, Azure ExpressRoute, or Google Cloud Interconnect is fundamental for performant and secure hybrid architectures. It provides a consistent, reliable, and often higher-bandwidth connection with lower latency and reduced data transfer costs compared to the public internet. It also enhances security by keeping traffic off the public internet. A CDN (A) is for caching content, a public gateway (C) exposes services to the internet, and load balancing (D) distributes traffic.

Proactive cost management is critical in the cloud. Setting budgets and configuring alerts (using tools like AWS Budgets, Azure Cost Management) allows teams to monitor consumption in near real-time, react to unexpected trends, and implement controls (like auto-shutdown) before costs escalate. Relying on monthly invoices (B) is reactive. Over-provisioning (C) contradicts the elastic nature of cloud. While accountability is important, a purely centralized model (D) can hinder agility; a decentralized model with clear tagging and showback/chargeback is often more effective.

A Community Cloud is defined by its shared use among a specific community of organizations that have shared requirements. This model allows them to collaborate and share infrastructure costs while meeting common regulatory, security, or policy needs that might not be fully addressed by a general-purpose public cloud. Option A describes a Private Cloud, C describes a Public Cloud, and D describes a Hybrid Cloud.

The correct approach balances risk, cost, and business objectives. A full rewrite (B) is often prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. Simply using larger instances (A) ignores the root cause and increases long-term costs. Decoupling on-premises (D) adds significant delay without leveraging cloud-native tools. Option C is the pragmatic, phased approach recommended by cloud migration frameworks: assess, move a stable baseline, then iteratively improve (refactor or re-architect) in the cloud environment itself.0