What does the acronym IaaS stand for in cloud services?

The acronym IaaS stands for Infrastructure as a Service. This term describes a form of cloud computing that provides virtualized computing resources over the internet. IaaS allows businesses to rent IT infrastructure, such as servers, storage, and networking, rather than investing in physical hardware that can be costly and require ongoing maintenance.

The essence of IaaS is to offer flexibility and scalability, enabling organizations to scale their infrastructure up or down based on their needs without the burden of managing physical servers. Users can deploy and manage their operating systems and applications on the allocated hardware while the IaaS provider maintains the physical infrastructure.

In contrast, the other choices do not accurately define IaaS. Information as a Service refers more to data delivery models, Internet as a Service is not a standard term used in cloud computing, and Integration as a Service usually relates to a service that facilitates the integration of various applications and data sources rather than providing foundational infrastructure.