What is PaaS (Platform as a Service)?

“Cloud Computing” has radically changed how business applications are developed and run. Delivering a new application is now as swift as driving a car. Platform as a service is a established model for running application without the hassle of managing the hardware and software infrastructure at your organization. Organizations  of all volume have accepted PaaS solutions for the effortlessness, scalability and dependability.

What is PaaS?

Platform as a Service, often simply referred to as PaaS, is a category of cloud computing that provides a platform and environment to let developers to develop applications and services over the internet. PaaS services are hosted in the cloud and accessed by users merely via their web browser.

Platform as a Service lets users to build software applications using tools provided by the provider. PaaS services can consist of attributes that users can subscribe to; they can choose to comprise the attributes that meet their requirements while ignoring those that do not. Consequently, packages can differ from offering straightforward frameworks where no client side hosting know-how is required to supplying the infrastructure options for advanced development.

The infrastructure and applications are managed for customers and support is available. Services are frequently updated, with existing features improved and additional features added. PaaS providers can help developers from the conception of their unique ideas to the creation of applications, and through to testing and deployment.

As with most cloud offerings, PaaS services are by and large paid for on a subscription basis with clients ultimately paying only for what they use. Clients also benefit from the economies of scale that come up from the sharing of the physical infrastructure between users, and that results in lower costs.

Some of the features that can be incorporated with a PaaS offering are:

• Operating System
• Network Access
• Hosting
• Server-side scripting environment
• Database management system
• Support 

Software developers and businesses can take advantage from PaaS. Whether developing an application which they are planning to offer over the internet or software to be sold out of the box, for e.g., web developers can use individual PaaS environments at every phase of the process to develop, test and eventually host their websites. On the other hand, businesses that are developing their own in-house software can also make use of Platform as a Service, predominantly to create different ring-fenced development and testing environments.

Some of the advantages of PaaS to software application developers are:

• They don’t have to spend in physical infrastructure; being able to ‘rent’ fundamental infrastructure has both cost benefits and realistic benefits. They don’t need to acquire hardware themselves or utilize the expertise to manage it. This allows them to focus on the development of applications. What’s more, clients will only need to rent the resources they need rather than spend in fixed, idle and therefore wasted facility.
• Makes software application development possible for ‘non-experts’; with PaaS offerings anyone can develop an application. They can merely do this through their web browser utilising one-click functionality. Relevant examples of this are one-click blog software installs such as WordPress.
• Flexibility; customers can manage the tools that are installed within their platforms and can build a platform that suits their specific requirements. They can ‘pick and choose’ the features they feel are required.
• Adaptability; Features can be distorted if circumstances dictate that they should.
• Teams in different locations can work together; as an internet connection and web browser are all that is required, developers spread across several locations can work together on the same application build.
• Security; security is provided, including data security and backup and recovery.

In summary, a PaaS offering supplies an operating environment for developing applications. In other words, it provides the architecture as well as the overall infrastructure to support application development.

About Author:

Tushar Kulkarni is consultant and part of Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. He is a part of consulting team that delivers Sourcing and Vendor Management Office projects. He can be contacted at:tushar.k@spluspl.com