What is one of the main benefits of using Amazon EC2?

One of the main benefits of using Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is the ability to scale computing capacity up or down based on demand. This elasticity allows users to efficiently handle varying workloads without the need to invest in physical hardware. Companies can quickly increase or decrease the number of virtual servers they use, which helps manage costs effectively while ensuring that application performance remains optimal.

This scaling can be done manually or automatically through features like Auto Scaling, which adjusts the number of instances running based on real-time demand. This flexibility means that businesses can respond to traffic spikes or decreases seamlessly, making EC2 highly suited for applications with fluctuating resource requirements.

While the other options highlight useful aspects of cloud services, they do not directly encapsulate this critical feature of EC2. Provisioning hardware quickly and easily is a benefit but is part of the broader scalable environment EC2 offers. Advanced database management capabilities and integrated machine learning tools are aspects of other AWS services and do not specifically represent main benefits of EC2 itself.