You’ve heard me natter on about cloud computing before; today I’d like to zero in on one aspect of it that doesn’t get a whole lot of publicity, but that could really be a boon to your business: PaaS—or Platform as a Service.
PaaS gives companies access to secure applications without purchasing the associated hardware required to host the applications for a large organization. Instead, they are only required to pay a monthly fee to obtain these services. Businesses are able to build web applications and services that are accessible entirely via the internet. Vendors provide servers, maintenance, and other associated services through their organizations. Through PaaS, companies are provided with all of the necessary tools for application design, application development, deployment, testing and hosting. PaaS benefits companies by providing tools that facilitate scalability, team collaboration, and application integration.
In the past, PaaS applications were incompatible with each other, meaning businesses were unable to transfer applications from one vendor’s product to another. Recent developments are allowing customers to interchange applications from one vendor’s product to the next through ‘open PaaS.’ Currently, open platform will allow developers to use any programming language, server, operating system or database.
Open PaaS provides companies with a choice, which of course allows the company flexibility and leverage if they are unhappy with the vendor. Developers prefer the flexibility of this application. Currently, open PaaS is available in theory; the platform is infrequently used in practice. As the idea becomes more popular, the ease of transferring applications from one PaaS provider to the next will improve. This will also lower prices for businesses who have invested time and resources into customized applications that currently must be reinvented if the PaaS vendor must change.
Because of the open platform, the competition no longer exists between closed PaaS platforms. The competition will now exist between the PaaS service providers and open source PaaS providers. This will change the market strategy slightly–however, the competition will still remain. PaaS providers and supporting application vendors that are aware of the changing technology will continue to thrive despite the developments.
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) stack is often compared with PaaS. SOA stacks allow businesses to integrate pre-existing applications and technology with other on-site applications. By contrast, PaaS actually allows businesses to create applications within the cloud. Therefore, companies are able to tailor applications to suit their exact business needs. Workflow management tools are also popular within PaaS platforms. These platforms, again, allow the business to create customized applications to address workflow. Businesses often prefer this option to vendor provided workflow solutions. Businesses have been known to create entire accounting applications using PaaS.
Practical Application:
Skifta is a company that assists consumers in shifting their media applications from one location to another complementary one. For example, music may be relocated from the computer to an MP3 player or television. Without cloud computing and PaaS systems, this process would not be possible. The system was scaled to multiple users in multiple regions through the “cloud.” If the company had chosen to purchase the related hardware and software, they would have incurred a $1 million expense. Instead, through cloud computing, the company incurred an expense that was relatively low, topping out around $70,000. Cloud computing saved Skifta a massive amount of money. The company even enjoys the capability of selecting its own programming language in order to provide maximum flexibility with the software.
