What term describes a system's capability to handle increased business volume in the future?

The term that accurately describes a system's capability to handle increased business volume in the future is scalability. Scalability refers to the ability of a system to accommodate growth, whether that involves an increase in users, transactions, or data processing. A scalable system can effectively continue to perform and meet demand as the workload increases, often without requiring significant reconfiguration or from incurring substantial additional costs.

Having scalability is crucial for businesses that anticipate growth, as it allows them to expand their operations and customer base without needing to overhaul their existing systems. This can involve scaling up by enhancing the capabilities of existing resources or scaling out by adding more resources to distribute the load.

Understanding scalability is essential for system analysts and architects when designing systems that need to adapt to changing business environments over time.