Timothy,
Cloud is the obvious choice. I believe application you refers to a Software application. Let’s take Gmail as an example for instance. Google provides you with a 15 GB storage to store your email and other files in Google Drive for free.
Now, let’s say Gmail is an on-premise software application which stores these in your laptop memory. Just imagine how hard it’ll be for you to manage all the emails that comes to you, spam filtering, etc. And there is always the case that you’ll run out of storage on your laptop, then you need to purchase a hard drive which is expensive and complex to maintain.
That’s why Cloud is the best solution. Hope this helps.