Comment by some_random

No, it doesn't at all. "it's scalable because it's in the cloud" may be reductive nonsense or it could be true. It's scalable because it's on someone elses computer and in a matter of minutes it can be on one of their computers with twice the ram and vCPUs. That is a meaningful thing to say when the alternative is CAPEX heavy investment in your own infrastructure. Same with "our clients want a cloud based solution" in contrast with on-prem installs. They don't want your shitty pizza box in their closet, they want someone else to be doing the hosting.