What distinguishes Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) from other cloud services?

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is primarily focused on providing fundamental computing resources over the internet. This model allows organizations to access physical and virtualized computing resources such as servers, storage space, and networking capabilities without the need for investing in and maintaining physical hardware.

The distinction of IaaS lies in its ability to offer pooled resources that can be scaled according to demand. Organizations can rent server space, data storage, and networking capabilities as needed, which enables flexibility and scalability. This is particularly advantageous because companies can avoid the upfront costs of physical infrastructure while only paying for what they use.

In contrast to this, other models like Software as a Service (SaaS) focus on delivering software applications to users without any need for installation or maintenance on the user’s part, leaving only application-level interactions. Similarly, Platform as a Service (PaaS) provides a platform allowing developers to build, deploy, and manage applications without the complexity of managing underlying infrastructure.

While IaaS includes elements necessary for running applications, such as operating systems and virtual machines, it does not specifically provide these as its core offering. Instead, it centers around the provision of virtualized computing resources, making option C the most accurate representation of IaaS. This