Reduced infrastructure cost in cloud computing means organizations do not need to buy, install, and maintain physical servers, networking equipment, and data centers. Instead, they rent computing resources from cloud providers and pay only for what they use.
- No upfront investment in hardware
- No need for physical data centers
- No maintenance and upgrade expenses
- No power, cooling, and space costs
- Pay only for actual usage
| Traditional IT Infrastructure |
Cloud Infrastructure |
| High upfront hardware cost |
No upfront hardware cost |
| Fixed capacity |
Flexible capacity |
| Overprovisioning required |
Scale on demand |
| Maintenance cost |
Managed by provider |
| Power and cooling cost |
Included in service |
- No need to purchase servers
- Use virtual machines on demand
- Databases, backups, and monitoring are managed by the provider
- Scale resources up or down automatically based on load
- Pay only for running resources and storage used
- Stop unused servers to avoid unnecessary charges
A startup wants to launch a web application but has limited budget and unpredictable user traffic.
- Start with 1 low-cost cloud VM for hosting the app
- No need to buy database servers
- Add more servers only when traffic increases
- Store files in low-cost cloud storage
- Stop servers during maintenance or off-hours
- 2 physical servers: ₹3,00,000
- Networking equipment: ₹1,00,000
- Power & cooling: ₹20,000/month
- Maintenance: ₹15,000/month
- 1 VM + storage + database: ₹4,000/month
- Scale only when needed
- No hardware or maintenance cost
- No upfront investment
- Low monthly operational cost
- Easy scaling without new hardware
- Predictable and controlled spending
Cloud computing reduces infrastructure costs by eliminating hardware purchases, lowering maintenance expenses, and enabling a pay-as-you-go model. Businesses can start small, scale easily, and optimize spending based on actual usage.