All About Platform As A Service (PaaS) Solutions

In movies like The Matrix and Transcendence, the infrastructure used to store data and power massive computer applications can seem, well, a little over the top.

These movies depict huge warehouse-sized facilities filled with labyrinthine corridors containing computer servers stacked floor-to-ceiling. Everything is boxy and mechanical. The spaces are devoid of humanity. They whir and click and blink in a very physical manifestation of what most of us view as an entirely virtual place — the cloud.  
The cloud isn’t really a cloud. It’s a foundation of hardware and software built on real computers — and lots of them — housed in very science-fiction-like facilities throughout the world.  
Companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google replace the need to build and maintain your own application development environment. These companies house the hardware, software and other infrastructure needed to build software applications in the cloud. They lease this hardware and software infrastructure out through a subscription-based approach called Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).
 

So, What Is PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service)?

In a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) computing model, a company like Amazon or Google provides the hardware and software components that developers need to create applications over the internet. This is a cloud-based approach akin to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).

The main attribute that defines PaaS is that the underlying development infrastructure (e.g., the hardware and software) is run and managed by a PaaS provider. This can be done completely remotely, on-premises or using a hybrid approach.

Today’s developers probably have a hard time imagining what building and maintaining large applications was like in the old days — and by “old days” we literally mean 15 years ago! PaaS is a comparatively new cloud service but that won’t stop us from taking an ever-so-brief trip down memory lane.
 

A Brief History Of PaaS

Everyone’s always going on and on about how Amazon invented the PaaS model (including Amazon!). However, it was actually Canon (yes, the camera company) that came up with the concept.
 

• 2002-2006

  Canon acquired a company called Fontago (an online photo-sharing website) in 2002. Fontago’s CEO, Simon Wardley, created a platform called Zimki that housed the entire developer experience. Developers coded within Zimki using an integrated development environment (IDE) in their browser and pulled their code from the Zimki environment to their local machines. For this service, they were billed per function. Canon, in a glorious example of terrible foresight, shut this service down a year later.

• 2006

  Amazon launched Amazon Simple Storage Services (S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). These were infrastructure-as-a-service approaches that ultimately set the stage for Amazon Web Services (AWS). S3 and EC2 were cloud-based storage and compute services.  Businesses paid Amazon based on the capacity used.

• 2007

  IBM got into the PaaS game when they announced plans to build cloud-based services for enterprise businesses. They launched IBM CloudBurst in 2009 and officially launched a cloud computing service, IBM SmartCloud, in 2011.

• 2008

  Google also got in on the fun with Google App Engine, which provided application development and hosting services housed on Google’s equipment and infrastructure. Microsoft, feeling left out, announced the launch of Windows Azure, a PaaS offering enabling users to host web applications on Microsoft Data Center.

• 2009

  China’s biggest commerce company Alibaba (akin to Amazon in the US) founded Alibaba Cloud and opened its first data center a year later.

As of April 2021, AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud (in that order) account for nearly 60% of the total cloud market share which includes IaaS and PaaS service providers. There are other players, of course, including Alibaba Cloud, IBM Cloud and Salesforce which together account for a $130 billion cloud-based development ecosystem that includes PaaS and IaaS providers.

With so much investment involved, you surely must be wondering – how does it even work? Don’t fret, that’s what we have covered next!
 

How Does The PaaS Model Work?

PaaS levels the playing field when it comes to computing power, giving small startups access to the same kind of application tech stacks, server storage, networking, middleware, security, operating systems and overall environment as the biggest companies.

Accidentally creating a maniacal computer intelligence housed entirely in the cloud isn’t just for the big guys anymore! Anyone with a laptop and an Internet connection can destroy mankind with the click of their mouse.
 
PaaS providers deliver their offering through a hosted environment that developers can access (primarily) via a web browser.  It’s a bring-your-own-application-specific data to the party (from the developer’s perspective). The PaaS provider covers everything else needed to create, run and manage software applications without worrying about building or maintaining the underlying infrastructure.
 

• A managed infrastructure environment

  where the PaaS provider maintains the servers and other resources needed to run applications. This includes networking resources, storage capacity and data centers/facilities.

• Tools to build and test software

  in an integrated environment which includes source code editors, debuggers, compilers and (very often) tools that help developers collaborate.

• Middleware applications

  that enable integrations of different operating systems and applications.

• The PaaS operating system

  and supporting databases which include maintaining and managing database infrastructure and providing database options (e.g., the database engine, cluster size, etc.)

This is starting to make those Hollywood server-room scenes seem a lot more exciting than real life which is all about wires and white noise and flat-roofed warehouses in desolate locations. We’re sorry to burst your bubble!

Let us make it up to you by explaining why.
 

Why Do We Need PaaS?

Businesses (and their developers) use PaaS because it saves them time, gives them access to sophisticated development tools and is far cheaper than investing in the hardware and software needed for in-house application development.

In short, it’s (much) cheaper and (way) easier to develop applications in the cloud. Some benefits of PaaS are:
 

• Speed

  With PaaS, developers can immediately begin building new applications in a secure development environment. PaaS services provide backend resources like templates, pre-built software components and code libraries which further reduce development time.

• Cost

  It’s cheaper to work within a PaaS environment than to build an application from scratch on your own custom system. You’ll also save money on staffing since the PaaS provider handles back-end system maintenance, software and hosting costs.

• Scalability

  PaaS allows developers to easily modify, deploy and scale their applications. They also make it much easier to extend applications to multiple platforms and channels (e.g., mobile) and connected devices.

• Viability

  A PaaS environment gives users access to cutting-edge hardware, software, operating systems and the skilled staff to run them. There is less (or no) need to upgrade equipment and software or upskill employees since this is all handled by the PaaS provider.

With such amazing features, surely PaaS is one to look out for in the future!
 

The Future Of PaaS

The global PaaS market is booming, according to Gartner, which way back in 2019 counted nearly 400 vendors who collectively offered over 550 platform services across nearly two dozen categories. Gartner expects the market to double in size by 2022, becoming an ever-increasing part of what they’ve dubbed the “cloud platform continuum.”

Emerging PaaS trends include the robust adoption of cloud-native design by more and more developers, which focuses on agility, innovation and speed-to-market. The role of IT will also shift. As more companies use PaaS to develop applications, they’ll outsource training, consulting and support to the PaaS provider.

Finally, one cannot talk about the future of any technology without mentioning Artificial Intelligence’s role in making things easier for humans.

The market for AI PaaS, which refers to employing AI (Artificial Intelligence) in a cloud-based development environment, is still emerging. In the context of PaaS, AI can facilitate data processing, storing data used for training Machine Learning models and analyzing/processing data which can be used to solve specific tasks. Before long, computers will be writing their own applications. This all sounds very transcendent, don’t you think?
 

Conclusion

Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) is a comprehensive cloud development and deployment environment with resources to create everything from simple cloud-based apps to sophisticated, cloud-based business systems. The big boys such as Google and Amazon aren’t the only ones who have thew tools to build a sentient quantum computer like the one in Transcendence!