Cloud Digital Leader Why Cloud Technology Can Transform Business Practice Question
A startup wants to launch a new application and expects unpredictable traffic patterns. They want to avoid upfront hardware costs and only pay for resources they use. Which cloud deployment model best meets their needs?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Public cloud
Public cloud offers pay-as-you-go pricing, on-demand scaling, and no upfront hardware costs, ideal for unpredictable workloads. Private and hybrid models typically involve capital expenditure.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
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Private cloud
Why it's wrong here
Private cloud requires dedicating infrastructure to a single tenant, typically via on-premises hardware or a hosted private environment. This entails significant capital expenditures, hardware procurement lead times, and fixed capacity that cannot scale elastically. For a startup with unpredictable demand, the upfront costs and overprovisioning risk make it a poor fit.
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Hybrid cloud
Why it's wrong here
Hybrid cloud environments combine public cloud services with on-premises infrastructure, but the on-premises component still carries hardware acquisition and maintenance costs. Even if the public side scales, the private side remains a fixed cost and introduces integration complexity for networking, security, and data synchronization. Thus, it does not fully eliminate the cost drawbacks the startup is trying to avoid.
- ✓
Public cloud
Why this is correct
Public cloud platforms like Google Cloud provide self-service, on-demand provisioning with pay-as-you-go pricing, requiring no capital investment. Their elastic auto-scaling handles unpredictable traffic by adjusting resources in real time, and users only pay for what they consume. This makes it the ideal choice for a startup that needs to minimize upfront costs while maintaining flexibility.
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Multi-cloud
Why it's wrong here
Multi-cloud is an architecture that deliberately uses services from multiple public cloud providers to achieve vendor independence or fault tolerance. It does not reduce cost by itself, and the added complexity of managing separate environments, networking, and data egress fees can increase operational and financial overhead. For a startup seeking simple, low-cost launch, a single public cloud is more aligned than multi-cloud.
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Related to this question
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Anthos for Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Apps
Key term
Model
In IT and AI, a model is a trained mathematical representation that learns patterns from data to make predictions or decisions.
Key term
Public cloud
A public cloud is a computing model where third-party providers deliver IT resources like servers, storage, and applications over the internet to multiple customers on a pay-as-you-go basis.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This GCDL practice question is part of Courseiva's free Google Cloud certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the GCDL exam.