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Cloud Digital Leader Practice Question: A company's finance director asks: 'If we move to…
A company's finance director asks: 'If we move to cloud, do we need to buy fewer servers?' An IT architect responds that the answer depends on whether the company is adopting IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS. How does the service model affect hardware ownership?
⚠ Common exam trap
The GCDL exam often tests the misconception that IaaS still requires on-premises servers for hybrid connectivity or that PaaS requires customer hardware, when in fact all three models shift physical hardware ownership to the cloud provider, and the difference lies in the level of customer management, not hardware ownership.
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
✓
In all three models, the cloud provider owns and manages the physical hardware, eliminating the need for customer-owned servers for those workloads — with IaaS requiring the most customer management (VMs) and SaaS requiring the least (just use the application)
In IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, the cloud provider owns and manages the physical hardware in their data centers. The customer's hardware ownership decreases as the service model abstracts more layers: IaaS provides virtual machines (VMs) that the customer manages, PaaS provides a managed platform (runtime, middleware) without customer control over the underlying OS or hardware, and SaaS delivers a fully managed application where the customer only uses the software. Thus, moving to any of these models reduces or eliminates the need for customer-owned servers for those specific workloads.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
All three models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) require the same amount of customer-owned hardware since cloud supplements rather than replaces on-premises systems
Why it's wrong here
Cloud services are designed to replace on-premises infrastructure for the workloads they cover, not merely supplement it. IaaS replaces physical servers with virtual machines on provider-owned hardware; PaaS replaces the need to host and manage the platform; SaaS replaces the entire application and its hosting environment. While hybrid architectures can be deliberate for specific integration or compliance reasons, they are not inherent to the service model. Therefore, the amount of customer-owned hardware varies by model—and is zero for the workloads moved to any cloud service.
- ✓
In all three models, the cloud provider owns and manages the physical hardware, eliminating the need for customer-owned servers for those workloads — with IaaS requiring the most customer management (VMs) and SaaS requiring the least (just use the application)
Why this is correct
This is correct. In all three models, the provider owns the physical hardware — the customer buys no servers. The difference is how much software infrastructure the customer manages on top: IaaS → manage VMs; PaaS → manage application code; SaaS → just use the product. All three eliminate customer hardware ownership for covered workloads.
- ✗
Only SaaS eliminates the need for customer servers; IaaS and PaaS still require on-premises hardware for hybrid connectivity
Why it's wrong here
This claim confuses hybrid connectivity with server hosting. In IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, the cloud provider owns and operates the physical servers that run the workloads, so no on-premises servers are needed for those workloads. Hybrid connectivity, when required, is achieved through VPNs or dedicated interconnects that use networking appliances or edge routers—not compute servers. Thus, all three models eliminate customer-owned servers for the covered workloads.
- ✗
The service model doesn't affect hardware ownership — hardware purchase decisions are independent of whether the company uses cloud services
Why it's wrong here
The service model directly determines hardware ownership because it defines the boundary of responsibility. In IaaS, the provider owns the physical hosts while the customer manages VMs; in PaaS, the provider also manages the runtime and middleware; in SaaS, the provider manages the entire application stack. In every case, the customer does not purchase or maintain servers for those workloads, fundamentally altering hardware purchase decisions. This statement ignores the provider's ownership of the underlying infrastructure across all cloud service models.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
Go deeper
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Key term
SaaS
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a cloud computing model where you use software over the internet without installing it on your own computer.
Key term
Model
In IT and AI, a model is a trained mathematical representation that learns patterns from data to make predictions or decisions.
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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.