What is Platform as a Service? – Understanding PaaS

• Mon 09-Jan, 2023
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What is Platform as a Service? – Understanding PaaS

PaaS, is a cloud computing service model.

Platform as a Service, otherwise known as PaaS, is a cloud computing service model in which a third-party provider delivers hardware and software tools (typically used in application development) to users over the internet. With PaaS, cloud migration services and solutions are enhanced with the possibility of quick deployment and adjusting the infrastructures to the current business demands. Based out of San Francisco, CA, Salesforce is one of the largest software enterprises in the world and has been selling cloud-based software solutions since its founding in 1999. Heroku is the company’s primary PaaS offering and is used by developers to create, test, deploy, and scale applications across numerous languages and frameworks. AWS is the largest and most widely used cloud vendor in the world. The company was founded in 2006, and currently controls over 30% of the entire global cloud market. While AWS does not offer a singular PaaS service in the conventional sense (such as Heroku), the company provides numerous tools and solutions that can be used to create a PaaS. Examples of AWS PaaS solutions include Elastic Beanstalk, Cloud90, and CodeDeploy. Like most of the other major cloud vendors, Azure offers numerous cloud services for all major service models (i.e. SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS). Two of the most popular Azure PaaS services are Azure Search and Azure App Service. Azure is the second most popular cloud vendor in the world, holding 22% of the market in 2022. Google Cloud Platform’s PaaS cloud offering, App Engine, features powerful built-in services that allow developers to create, host, and manage mobile and web applications. The service was started in 2008 and is used by tens of thousands of businesses to build scalable applications on the cloud.

 

PaaS Characteristics

 

PaaS typically incorporates an operating system, middleware, other software, databases, and various infrastructure that allows application developers to build, test, deploy, and manage applications from a cloud-based environment. The various components and infrastructure that comprise a PaaS environment, apart from user-managed data and applications, are all owned, operated, and maintained by the service provider, not the end user. Defining characteristics of a PaaS solution include:

·         Web-based UI for user access

·         Various services for developers to build, test, run, and manage the entire application development lifecycle

·         Multitenancy

·         High degree of scalability

·         Subscription or usage-based payment model

 

PaaS Products and Vendors

 

PaaS vendors are third-party service providers that offer PaaS products to other businesses or end users. Examples of various vendors that sell PaaS products include:

 

·         Red Hat

·         AWS

·         Azure

·         Salesforce

·         Google

·         SAP

·         Apprenda

·         Dokku

 

Although privately owned PaaS solutions exist (typically at an enterprise level), the term “PaaS products” refers to commercially available solutions most commonly used by application development teams.

 

PaaS Providers

 

Another term for vendors, “PaaS providers” are third-party businesses that create and sell PaaS solutions to other organizations, users, and application developers. CertOcean is an example of a PaaS provider, with our Rollingstack solution being an example of a PaaS offering. Rollingstack is a cloud development and operations management platform. One of Rollingstack’s main features is its advanced DevOps automation capabilities.

 

PaaS Applications

 

While one of the most common reasons why organizations use PaaS is for the development, testing, and deployment of applications, PaaS can be used for a variety of purposes. PaaS applications exist for numerous functions such as BI, DevOps, API management, and various IoT use cases. One of the benefits of utilizing PaaS-based tools is their inherent flexibility and scalability – users can perform advanced customizations, integrations, as well as on-demand horizontal and vertical scaling.

 

PaaS Technologies

 

While Heroku has become the most recognizable PaaS service, the technology got its start back in 2006 by London-based Zimki (in the form of a Javascript-based code execution platform). The impact that PaaS technologies have had on the business world has been profound. PaaS has empowered developers to efficiently create, test, deploy, and manage apps over the internet in a way that wasn’t possible before the cloud – enabling businesses to become more agile, release software products much quicker, and fully leverage the power of cloud computing. The inherent scalability of PaaS technologies, coupled with budget-friendly pricing models, has allowed organizations to develop and release new solutions faster with far less overhead costs than in the past. Some of the most innovative apps and solutions on the market relied on PaaS technologies to get there.

 

PaaS Services

 

In a B2B context, PaaS services are the various offerings that providers, or vendors, offer to other businesses to help optimize and manage application lifecycles, allowing developers to focus on code – not infrastructure. Examples of what’s included in a typical PaaS service offering include:

 

·         Application development tools

·         Business Intelligence (BI) tools

·         DevOps automation tools

·         AI and machine learning functionalities

·         Application monitoring

·         Vendor-maintained infrastructure and underlying components

 

PaaS Solutions

 

PaaS solutions offer an easy way for organizations to efficiently develop, test, run, and manage applications in the cloud, with their primary user base being application developers. A PaaS solution can be thought of as an application development platform accessed over the internet, existing in the space between SaaS and IaaS.Most PaaS solutions are used in the context of cross-platform application development, DevOps, and mobile app development, but usage varies and numerous types of solutions are available on the market. Examples of some of the most common PaaS solutions include:

 

·         AWS Elastic Beanstalk

·         Salesforce Heroku

·         Google App Engine

·         IBM Cloud

·         Red Hat OpenShift

·         DigitalOcean App Platform

 

PaaS Tools

 

Just like SaaS tools, PaaS tools are delivered via the internet, the difference being that they’re meant for software developers to create, test, deploy, and manage apps with. The primary benefit of using PaaS tools for development work is that they allow developers to focus more on developing, managing, and scaling applications – not needing to worry about maintaining operating systems, storage, infrastructure, etc. (which are all managed by the PaaS vendor). For example, Red Hat OpenShift is one of the more popular PaaS tools on the market. Developers use this tool to streamline the way they build and deploy web applications via container and Kubernetes-based technologies.

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