Global population growth directly correlates with an increase in the potential user base for digital products and services. This expanding market creates a significant demand for more data, connectivity, and processing power. Consequently, IT leaders are compelled to strategically plan for and support the rapid expansion of digital infrastructures—including data centers, cloud services, and network capabilities—to meet this rising demand, ensure service quality, and maintain a competitive edge.

B. By restricting access to conserve existing resources

Restricting access is a counterproductive strategy that fails to meet market demand and would lead to loss of business and relevance.

C. By delaying upgrades until population trends stabilize

Population growth is a long-term, continuous trend; delaying necessary upgrades would result in overwhelmed, obsolete, and insecure systems.

D. By focusing on routine system upkeep instead of expanding

While upkeep is essential, ignoring expansion in a growth environment would make systems incapable of handling the increased load, leading to performance failures.

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1. Kshetri

N. (2010). The Global Digital Divide: A Multidimensional Analysis. Journal of Global Information Technology Management

13(1)

5-31. In its analysis of factors influencing Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

the paper identifies population size and density as key demographic variables that create demand and drive the need for infrastructure investment (pp. 10-12). https://doi.org/10.1080/1097198X.2010.10856508

2. Armbrust

M.

Fox

A.

Griffith

R.

Joseph

A. D.

Katz

R.

Konwinski

A.

... & Zaharia

M. (2010). A view of cloud computing. Communications of the ACM

53(4)

50-58. This foundational paper on cloud computing highlights elasticity and the ability to scale to serve large

growing user bases as a primary benefit. IT leaders leverage this to manage the infrastructure demands driven by macro trends like population growth (Section 3.1

"Elasticity and Scalability"). https://doi.org/10.1145/1721654.1721672

3. Menascé

D. A. (2002). Load testing of Web sites. IEEE Internet Computing

6(4)

89-93. This article underscores the principle of capacity planning

where IT leaders must forecast user growth—a direct function of the addressable population—to provision adequate infrastructure and prevent system failures. The core task is to plan for expansion in anticipation of demand.