Computational elasticity

In economics, elasticity is the ratio of the percent change in one variable to the percent change in another variable. Computational elasticity is the application of this concept to how computer systems scale with relation to temporal & monetary costs.

The concept of computational elasticity is a particularly useful concept for comparing cloud computing platforms with relation to costs. An example question where the concept of computational elasticity is useful might include:

If the number of users on my website expands from 100/day to 1000000/day over the course of the next week, what will the cost be to ensure a fast page load?

• Cost is a function of the infrastructure the site runs on, which in-turn is heavily influenced by the computational elasticity of the infrastructure.
• Infrastructure capable of rapidly accommodating this rapid increase in required computing power at low monetary & temporal cost has a high computational elasticity.
• Infrastructure that will require significant costs to handle this increase in required computing power has a low computational elasticity.