As the popularity of cloud technology continues to increase with the industry now worth nearly £13.8 billion in the UK, deploying cloud services has become an industry of its own. PaaS, which stands for Platform as a Service, provides the infrastructure platform required to run applications and code, without the overhead of managing any additional infrastructure as the need for scale grows.
What is Platform as a Service (PaaS)?
PaaS enables consumers (typically developers) to build and manage applications and services in the Cloud, whilst the PaaS provider manages the underlying infrastructure and software components. This allows consumers to focus solely on managing their data and development in a cost-effective way.
Essentially, PaaS builds on and includes Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), so not only providing consumers with Networking, Storage, and compute component (such as Virtualised machines) but also with the necessary operating systems and security services. Perhaps most crucially to software developers, PaaS comes packaged with integration software tools and services (including webservices and databases) that facilitate the testing and development of applications without the concern of having to manage hardware upkeep or software updates.
Organisations in this space should develop a strategy aimed at maximising the benefits PaaS offers in-turn extracting the most value for their time and money.
3 Key Benefits of PaaS to Different Organisations
Three key advantages of using PaaS for application or software deployment are listed below.
- Cost Savings
By packaging infrastructure and software service components such as, networking equipment, storage, middleware, databases, servers and associated operating systems, PaaS provides a cost-effective way to deploy scaled environments quickly and without the burden and overheads of equivalent on-premise solutions. - Shorter time to Market
Using PaaS, DevOps and data science teams can focus on managing and developing products for their market or working with their data to create market insights as part of the product lifecycle. Allowing teams to be more responsive to change and ultimately reduce the time to bring new or improved services to the consumers. - Flexible Scalability
The speed of deployment and typical Pay-Per-Use models of PaaS provide data and software teams the opportunity to quickly create environments to suit their scale and just as quickly tear them down when no longer needed. This provides the flexibility to ramp up and down in line with consumer demand or according to a project’s schedule.
5 Key Considerations for choosing a Relevant PaaS Provider
PaaS providers offer a customisable environment for designing, developing, and managing applications. Choosing a suitable provider for your needs can be difficult, to help you make that assessment, here are five key considerations to consider:
- Frameworks and Languages
PaaS providers offer several languages and frameworks. Therefore, your chosen provider must support the languages and frameworks that support your preferred delivery environment. - Regulations
Make sure a PaaS provider follows industry norms and regulations before choosing it. Know how the provider will maintain compliance with the relevant legislation and industry-specific compliance requirements for your needs. - Privacy
Always consider data and application security. The desired provider will have ethical rules and explicit confidentiality procedures to protect data. In the UK you should also consider whether they support GDPR requirements and sector-specific security guidance. - Dependability and Effectiveness
Assess whether the provider can meet (or preferably exceed) your system resilience requirements to always increase the chance of service availability for your teams and any end users of your applications and services. - Business Expertise
Evaluate the PaaS provider’s prior performance, including its corporate history, length of PaaS service, and relevant sector experience. This should give you confidence that they are not only a good fit for your use case but also that will last the course and be around for as long as you might need them.
Conclusion
They are designed to be, versatile, cost-efficient, and highly scalable for those consumers who’s business it is to provide Cloud-First applications and Services to their customers with minimum fuss. Prospective organisations in this space should develop a strategy aimed at maximising the benefits PaaS offers in-turn extracting the most value for their time and money.