Cloud bursting meaning

Cloud bursting is the temporary use of extra compute, memory, storage or network bandwidth from a public cloud to supplement a private cloud when demand spikes, so services remain available and performant. In legal practice it describes workloads overflowing from an on‑premises or private environment to a third‑party cloud provider as part of a hybrid cloud arrangement. It is an industry term, not defined in legislation or case law, and its usage is broadly consistent across England & Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland. Key contracting points include: permission to burst and defined triggers (manual or automated); which service levels apply during burst periods; security and compliance equivalence; data location, international transfers and transparency under the UK GDPR and the EU/Irish GDPR; approval, audit and liability for sub‑processors/chain outsourcing; software licensing and usage metrics; pricing, metering, egress charges and minimum commitments; incident management, resilience and business continuity; change control and exit/portability. Regulatory considerations may arise in regulated sectors (for example, financial services outsourcing rules, critical infrastructure/network security obligations and public sector procurement). Some providers also use “cloud bursting” to describe autoscaling within a single public cloud; the legal analysis is similar.