In a corporation where compute utilization spikes several times a year, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has requested a cost-effective architecture to handle the variable capacity demand. Which of the following characteristics BEST describes what the CIO has requested?

A. Elasticity

B. Scalability
C. High availability
D. Redundancy

Explanation:
Elasticity is defined as “the degree to which a system is able to adapt to workload changes by provisioning and de-provisioning resources in an autonomic manner, such that at each point in time the available resources match the current demand as closely as possible”.