Cloud Digital Leader Practice Question: Use computing resources over the internet without…

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

• ✗

  Software as a Service (SaaS)

  Why it's wrong here

  Software as a Service (SaaS) is incorrect because it delivers a complete, ready-to-use application—like Gmail or Salesforce—where the provider owns everything from hardware through the application layer, and the customer only manages user access and data. The scenario in question concerns the provisioning of virtual machines and the customer's ongoing administration of the OS and middleware, which are tasks that never exist in a SaaS model. Since the service being described is raw compute capacity rather than a finished business application, it cannot be classified as SaaS.

• ✓

  Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

  Why this is correct

  Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is the correct model because it provides fundamental computing resources—virtual machines, storage, and networks—where the provider maintains the physical hardware and virtualization layer, and the customer is accountable for the guest OS, middleware, and applications. Compute Engine is Google's canonical IaaS offering, matching the exact responsibility split described in the question. Unlike PaaS or SaaS, IaaS requires the customer to patch the OS, install runtimes, and configure security, which is precisely the level of control implied by the scenario.

• ✗

  Platform as a Service (PaaS)

  Why it's wrong here

  Platform as a Service (PaaS) is the wrong classification because it supplies a managed application-hosting environment—such as Google App Engine—where the provider handles the underlying OS, runtime, and middleware, while the customer remains responsible for writing and deploying application code. Compute Engine, by contrast, offers raw virtual machines with full customer control over the guest OS, libraries, and middleware, which is a level of infrastructure control that PaaS does not permit. The question describes compute resources where the buyer configures and maintains the operating system, which is the defining responsibility of IaaS, not PaaS.

• ✗

  Function as a Service (FaaS)

  Why it's wrong here

  Function as a Service (FaaS) is not the correct model because it executes stateless, event-driven functions in a serverless environment, requiring the provider to manage all infrastructure automatically and scale functions per invocation in milliseconds. The described offering gives the customer a persistent virtual machine to install an operating system and run middleware, which is fundamentally different from FaaS's ephemeral function execution and auto-scaling model. FaaS abstracts away the server entirely, whereas the scenario explicitly involves managing the server's OS, so FaaS does not match.

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