Traditional data centers involve on-premises hardware and require organizations to manage physical assets, while cloud-based data centers provide off-premises computing power with scalability and flexibility. Cloud services offer key characteristics such as on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, and rapid elasticity, along with various service and deployment models. The operating costs of traditional data centers typically range from $10 million to $25 million annually, influenced primarily by hardware and labor, whereas cloud data centers incur costs that are structured differently, focusing on labor, power distribution, and computing workloads.