Interview Questions/Phone Screen/Cloud Service Models
BeginnerPhone
2 min

Cloud Service Models

CloudAWSAzureGCP
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Interview Question

Explain the differences between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, and provide one example of each.

Key Points to Cover
  • IaaS: infra resources (AWS EC2, Azure VM)
  • PaaS: managed platforms (Heroku, GCP App Engine)
  • SaaS: hosted applications (Gmail, Salesforce)
Evaluation Rubric
Explains IaaS with examples33% weight
Explains PaaS with examples33% weight
Explains SaaS with examples34% weight
Hints
  • 💡Think ownership of infrastructure vs service.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
  • ⚠️Confusing which layers of the IT stack each model manages (e.g., user vs. provider responsibility).
  • ⚠️Providing incorrect or non-standard examples for each service model.
  • ⚠️Failing to articulate the fundamental benefit or use case for each model.
  • ⚠️Not clearly explaining the 'as a Service' aspect (i.e., the consumption model difference).
  • ⚠️Overcomplicating the explanation with overly technical jargon for a beginner-level question.
Potential Follow-up Questions
  • What about FaaS?
  • How does PaaS simplify scaling?
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