Demystifying PaaS

Cloud technologies have opened up a plethora of exciting business ideas for start-ups, midsize firms and large corporations alike. It’s never been more exciting for organizations to leverage this most innovative and advanced form of technology to create better business models and better customer experiences. Also, let’s not forget that the changing consumer predicament in a digital economy is compelling organizations to adopt new technologies.

The business benefits of cloud computing are well established, but I am convinced there still exists a lot of confusion among IT and business managers about the different models of cloud computing, namely Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). It is important for companies to understand how these three models cater to different needs of enterprise IT so that they can be fully leveraged for business across all critical components of the IT layer – be it software, middleware/ database/ integration tools or hardware.

Software as a Service refers to software on the cloud and is one of the earliest forms of cloud computing technology known or adopted. Many business applications are today available in the cloud on a pay-per-use model whether it is enterprise resource planning, or human resources management, customer relation/experience management, supply chain management, or enterprise performance management or any industry specific applications (FSI/telecom/finance etc.) etc. By accessing an app on the cloud, business users and IT departments do not have to install, maintain or upgrade these software for dozens or even thousands of devices and users. It frees up considerable time and cost from IT allocations.

Platform as a Service is the cloud tier for middleware, integration tools and databases. PaaS offers consumers access to a broad range of services ranging from middleware to database, in-memory analytics, mobile, Big Data, process, and document management etc. to enable assembly of custom applications with a wide range of capabilities. Like other “as a service” models, PaaS cuts down on both costs and complexities. All the hassle and expense of buying, integrating and maintaining software, hardware and platform technology are the responsibility of the PaaS service provider. The advantages go beyond reduced cost. PaaS reduces application development and deployment time making it one of the fastest growing segments in cloud computing today.

Infrastructure as a Service is a computing model that delivers compute, storage and networking services on the cloud on a subscription basis. It offers enterprises the option to access computing capacity in the form of virtual machines, storage, and network connectivity through a web-based portal that serves as an operations management console. The service provider owns and maintains infrastructure, and typically houses it in their datacentres. The infrastructure scales on demand, which makes the concept appealing to growing and fledgling businesses alike, because they don’t have to invest in IT infrastructure of their own.

PaaS vs IaaS

Very often there is confusion between IaaS and PaaS and most enterprises do not understand that the two models cater to different needs of Enterprise IT. IaaS is about giving hardware access like compute power, server, networking services and storage as a pay-per-use service.

PaaS is the platform that is installed on top of this hardware layer and the leading vendor in the space is Oracle. The PaaS power comes into play in the context of developing, deploying,  managing and extending SaaS applications. App development teams can use familiar architectures, utilities, and products including IDEs or Integrated Development Environments —and then deploy their apps on-premises or to the public cloud. Taking a new business idea and building an application to support it can be done much more quickly and with lower risk using PaaS.

PaaS Fastest Growing Cloud Model

Gartner predicts that the PaaS market is expected to reach $1.8 billion in 2015 and $2.9 billion in revenue worldwide by 2016[1]. Organizations are looking for platform services that let them create and deploy applications quickly, with the ability to integrate data and processes between cloud systems and on-premises systems with less hassle. They are very keen to have business applications that are more dynamic and have the ability to incorporate new types of mobile, analytic, and social capabilities.

It is more efficient and powerful if these capabilities are built into the PaaS so they can be leveraged and shared by multiple applications. Mobile computing is an excellent example. Supporting a mobile workforce requires accommodating a variety of devices, development platforms, and standards. Having a PaaS platform to manage multiple mobile platforms and devices saves IT considerable headaches with respect to integration, security and inter-operability. In some cases, it’s easier to move your business applications to the cloud where you can utilize the mobile, social, and collaborative aspects of the PaaS platform than it is to create these new application services from scratch.

Conclusion

As we move towards an app economy, PaaS will become more important for businesses to ensure faster go-to-market and better engagement with employees and consumers. PaaS is becoming an increasingly popular choice for businesses looking for a more agile solution for developing, testing and deploying bespoke applications.