What is a key capability of infrastructure as a service (IaaS)?

The key capability of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) lies in its ability to provide a converged network and IT capacity pool. IaaS offers organizations access to virtualized computing resources over the internet, allowing them to manage and scale their infrastructure on demand. This capability enables businesses to efficiently allocate resources, streamline operations, and minimize the need for on-premises hardware, thus leveraging the benefits of cloud computing.

By being able to aggregate computing power, storage, and networking resources into a unified pool, IaaS allows users to draw from these resources as needed, making it highly flexible and cost-effective. This contrasts with other models like platform as a service (PaaS) or software as a service (SaaS), which focus more on application deployment and management rather than the underlying infrastructure. In this way, the characteristic of offering a converged network and IT capacity pool is fundamental to the value proposition of IaaS in cloud computing ecosystems.