IBM Assessment: Cloud Computing and Business Process Services v1 Advanced Practice Exam: Hard Questions 2025

A regulated financial services firm is migrating a customer risk-scoring workload to cloud. The application is stateful and currently runs on VMs with local disks; it requires predictable low latency for a subset of read operations, but must also meet RPO≈0 and RTO<15 minutes across regions. Data residency rules require primary data to remain in one geography, but DR is allowed in a second geography. Which architecture best balances resiliency, latency, and compliance?

A SaaS provider experiences intermittent 502/504 errors only during rapid traffic spikes. The application tier is stateless and auto-scales quickly, but downstream dependencies include a database and a third-party fraud-check API with strict rate limits. The team wants to reduce user-visible errors without significantly increasing steady-state cost. Which design change is most effective?

A company running containerized microservices wants to enforce least privilege for service-to-service access. They currently rely on static API keys stored as environment variables. Security mandates short-lived credentials, auditable access, and automatic rotation without redeploying services. Which approach best meets these requirements in a cloud-native way?

An enterprise wants to modernize its Accounts Payable process using Business Process Services (BPS). The current process has frequent exceptions (missing PO, mismatched invoice lines, regional tax variations). Leadership demands measurable cycle-time reduction while maintaining compliance and auditability. Which engagement design is most appropriate?

A global HR BPS provider is onboarding a new client. The client’s policy requires segregation of duties (SoD), country-specific data retention, and evidence for audits. During transition, the provider discovers local teams have undocumented workarounds that bypass approvals. What is the BEST next step to prevent control failures while maintaining transition velocity?

A BPS engagement includes an SLA for "claims processed within 24 hours." The provider meets the SLA but the client complains that customer satisfaction is dropping due to rework and incorrect outcomes. Which metric strategy BEST addresses this misalignment?

A client wants to run a hybrid workload where sensitive data stays on-premises, but they need cloud-based AI services for document classification. Network connectivity is reliable but high latency is occasionally observed. They must ensure data is never persisted in the cloud beyond processing and must be able to prove this to auditors. Which solution pattern is MOST appropriate on IBM Cloud?

A team is deploying a multi-tenant application on IBM Cloud. Tenants require strong isolation, but the team also needs cost efficiency and rapid provisioning. Some tenants demand dedicated encryption keys and isolated network boundaries. Which tenancy model is the BEST fit?

After integrating several services, an IBM Cloud-hosted API begins experiencing intermittent authentication failures. Logs show token validation errors and occasional time skew warnings across containers. The issue appears after scaling events and node replacements. What is the MOST likely root cause and best corrective action?

A company uses event-driven integration between an order service and downstream fulfillment systems. During a regional incident, the message broker recovers but downstream systems process some events twice, causing duplicate shipments. The architecture already uses at-least-once delivery for resilience. What change BEST prevents duplicates while preserving resiliency?