Which cloud service model is most commonly used by application developers?

• A. IaaS
• B. PaaS
• C. SaaS
• D. DaaS

Answer: (B)

Platform as a Service provides a complete development and runtime environment in the cloud, designed for building, testing, deploying, and scaling applications. It gives developers the code-focused workspace plus managed services like databases, messaging, authentication, and CI/CD pipelines, so they don’t have to handle the underlying infrastructure, operating systems, patching, or server management. This accelerates development cycles and collaboration, which is why it’s the go-to choice for application developers.

In contrast, infrastructure-as-a-service focuses on raw computing resources that you must configure and manage (OS, runtimes, updates, scaling). Software as a service delivers finished applications you use rather than build, while data as a service centers on providing data services rather than app development.