Many businesses today want to provide a higher level of customer service and support to their customers by using applications and solutions developed on the web. However, they often find the costs of developing and deploying these applications prohibitive. In recent years, however, various service providers have emerged to reduce these costs and offer affordable application development. The most prominent of the services offered by these providers is the Platform as a Service (PaaS) model, which provides businesses with an independent platform on which web applications can be built, optimized and deployed.
More details about Cloud Computing: https://devopstipstricks.com/what-is-cloud-technology-and-cloud-computing/
What is PaaS (Platform As A Service)?
PaaS, or Platform As A Service, provides a private platform for customers to develop, run and manage applications without building and maintaining the cloud infrastructure needed to develop and launch an application.
Like other cloud services, it comes with basic infrastructure, networking, storage and servers. The system also allows developers to build different types of applications, including those that use middleware, database management, software distribution and intelligence services.
PaaS solutions have everything a modern company might need for software applications and infrastructure management. When it comes to servers, you can find solutions related to physical or virtual servers, as well as remote server and email server.
How Platform as a Service Works
PaaS systems power the back-end of an application, including storage, operating systems, servers and databases. In other words, developers are provided with the tools and environment needed to build their applications on a pre-existing back-end.
With managed load balancing, developers can work from any device, anywhere and anytime. This type of setup allows developers to focus on the user experience and the front-end. The entire environment comes with continuous integration to provide extra functionality.
The providers of the PaaS environment apply security patches and protect the platform as a whole. By using such environments, security risks are reduced and development becomes more targeted.
What are PaaS Use Cases?
PaaS is easy to operate without detailed system administration knowledge, accessible to multiple users and highly scalable. It is also built on virtualization technology, eliminating the need for costly on-site hardware management. This makes PaaS an ideal solution to meet business need in several scenarios:
- Application Development
Probably the most well-known use case for PaaS is application development. PaaS provides a complete framework that developers can use to build cloud applications for internal or external users. PaaS is often presented as a no-code or low-code development solution, where those with limited or no coding experience can assemble pre-built components to create effective software programs.
- Process Automation
Going a step beyond application development, PaaS solutions make it possible for businesses to automate complete business processes. Businesses can automate approval, notification and registration processes without in-depth coding using PaaS solutions to create effective digital workflows customized to the needs of the organization.
- Analytics
Businesses operating within a PaaS platform can take a clearer and closer look at their data. They can identify trends, predict outcomes more accurately and gain insight into key business decisions. Built-in analytics tools ensure that no important data is left unanalyzed, bottlenecks are identified and no opportunity for improvement is missed.
What are the Types of PaaS?
While the basic definition of PaaS remains the same, there are two different types of PaaS to consider.
- Public PaaS
The more common public PaaS provides services to paying customers. These services, solutions and tools are accessible over the internet. Public PaaS, which provides middleware and other resources, allows businesses to build applications and processes without having to manage the necessary infrastructure.
- Enterprise PaaS
While cloud computing relies on off-site third-party vendors to provide the necessary infrastructure at its core, enterprise PaaS takes an on-premises approach. Using their own servers, networks and middleware to provide application tools and resources, businesses using enterprise PaaS maintain tighter control over data security. However, they also bear the costs and responsibilities of managing the entire IT infrastructure.
What are the Advantages of PaaS for Businesses?
Platform-as-a-Service hardware and software provides benefits such as streamlining development tools, reducing infrastructure cost, running on multiple operating systems and supporting various programming languages.
Other advantages of using a third-party PaaS cloud computing model include the following:
- Lower costs
The traditional pay-as-you-go cloud computing model can mean significant cost savings for businesses. Businesses can pay only for the services they need, rather than incurring all the costs associated with installing, maintaining and managing on-site servers. In addition, PaaS scales easily with the business as needs change and the business grows.
- Faster application development
By taking on much of the software development work, new applications and products can be built, tested and deployed in a fraction of the time required for traditional in-house solutions and tools.
- Multi-platform integration
Instead of building and training development teams for mobile, desktop, tablet, etc., businesses can create a single software solution that can run on the user’s platform of choice.
- API development and management
Companies can use PaaS solutions to manage application programming interfaces as well as microservices. This includes security, development, creating new APIs and end-to-end API management.
- Business analytics/intelligence
Some PaaS solutions include tools that enable businesses to analyze their data for business insights and behavioral patterns. These tools give businesses the information needed to make better decisions and more accurately predict things like market demand for products.
- Business process management (BPM)
Businesses can access a BPM platform delivered as a service through PaaS solutions. BPM packages integrate the IT components needed for process management, including data, business rules and service level agreements.
- Communication
PaaS can provide communication platforms. This allows developers to add communication features such as voice, video and messaging to applications.
- Databases
A PaaS provider can provide database services such as installation and maintenance to a business. Database PaaS is an on-demand, secure and scalable self-service database model. According to analyst firm Forrester Research, provisioning and management of databases can be automated.
- Primary data management (PDM)
Primary data management (MDM/PDM) software tracks the most important data points across the company, providing a single point of reference for data. From this reference point, the software provides insights into company operations, customers and goals. Such data can include reference data, such as information about customer transactions, and analytical data to support decision-making. Users can then apply this data as they see fit, keeping records of data history and making projections based on the findings. Working with IT teams, the operations team can identify key metrics and pinpoint areas of concern across the entire business, measure the success of individual departments, improve productivity and maximize ROI.
Are there times when PaaS is not the right solution?
Despite some of its advantages, PaaS is not the right choice to meet the needs of some businesses. So before you start using PaaS, you should consider the following potential disadvantages of PaaS:
- Less security control
Businesses with strict security standards may find that some cloud providers fail to meet their requirements. However, most cloud providers use stricter and more effective security measures than the businesses they serve.
- Difficult infrastructure alignment
Cloud services need to be able to work effectively with existing enterprise infrastructure. Unfortunately, due to the presence of legacy systems and the wide variety of IT infrastructure designs a business can be built on, easy cloud integration is not always possible. Making the necessary changes to facilitate infrastructure adaptation can be prohibitively expensive.
- Unexpected downtime
Power outages, maintenance issues, hackers or other emergency events can disrupt access to third-party providers. Businesses that depend on these providers have little control over unexpected downtime, but can suffer the consequences as essential tools become unavailable.
PaaS Examples
Below are some of the most popular PaaS examples:
- Amazon Web Services
AWS Elastic Beanstalk is the most popular PaaS solution. It allows IaaS users to build applications and continuously adds new development tools. AWS Elastic Beanstalk is ideal for applications developed in Docker, Java, PHP, Python and other programming languages.
- IBM Cloud
IBM offers an open source security platform with full control over the entire web application lifecycle. DevOps teams can take advantage of many different third-party service provider options that extend functionalities.
- Google App Engine
The application engines have excellent uptime and support many language packs, GitHub integration and many other valuable integrations.
The Difference Between SaaS and PaaS
SaaS is a service that allows people to use specific software over the internet. The provider manages the platform and its infrastructure.
PaaS is an entire environment that customers can use to manage, run and develop applications. This happens without having to worry about managing operating systems.
Basically, PaaS allows users to manage data and applications, making it perfect for enterprises, while SaaS is designed for end users.
Find out more about IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS: https://devopstipstricks.com/what-is-infrastructure-as-a-service-iaas-differences-between-iaas-vs-paas/
References:
https://www.ibm.com/topics/paas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_service
https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/cloud-computing/what-is-paas
