When acquisitioning PaaS services, a cloud computing client benefits from a platform that gives him the possibility to develop, run and manage applications without investing time and funds into putting together the infrastructure (platform) itself. Making sure to deliver the best in PaaS is important.
There are two listed types of PaaS delivery:
- Public cloud PaaS (that includes the network, the servers, the storage and other necessary features for the client to develop his applications and operations on);
- Private cloud PaaS (middleware installed on private data centers, and over which the client and its internal IT departments take control in exchange for the service fee);
In a 2013 article, Cloud Tweaks underlined how PaaS and SaaS are actually the cloud computing rising champions, although they may appear to be in the shadow of SaaS. Nevertheless, once the providers included PaaS in their offer, the cloud-computing field registered a boom; this also facilitated the increase of DevOps (collaboration between network administrators and software developers). Basically, the developers’ work is improved by taking the burden of platform/infrastructure development and management from them and placing it to the provider.
A lot of time and energy are thus saved, for developers to invest more into application development and client-specific cloud operations.
Built on IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service), PaaS comprises all middleware elements necessary to the cloud computing processes, a characteristic that made Oracle nickname PaaS the conductor of the cloud orchestra.
The importance of quality PaaS
A good PaaS delivery ensures that everything goes smoothly for the client’s dev team, enabling them to use the IaaS services at their full capacity and proceed with their cloud-based activities. The above-mentioned Oracle article re-memorizes a few of PaaS’s essential functions:
- PaaS acts as a bridge between the cloud environment and the on premise client IT environment;
- PaaS has a crucial role in customizing SaaS delivery so that it would perfectly fit the client’s needs;
- PaaS enables agility and integration (harmonization) between the desired cloud services, allowing the virtualization of various processes;
- PaaS enables the extension of SaaS’s applications towards extra capabilities such as analytics;
- PaaS enables ad-hoc implementations if the client so desires, making the cloud computing activity adaptive and responsive to the user’s needs;
While it does enable high-level programming free of infrastructure and middleware hindrance, PaaS also has its own issues, linked to all activities being locked to one specific platform or the limitation of tools compatible with the platform.
The pioneers of best in PaaS
- In March 2006 a London–based company (Fontango) launched the first ever PaaS by the name of Zimki. The event took place at the EuroOSCON, and the type of the platform was public. Canon Europe was the owner of Fontango. Their multi-tenant platform enabled developers to save time and money on start-up costs while they employed the Zimki capabilities based on Javascript. Previous to 2006, the same platform carried the name of libapi (liberation API) – but this 2005 version flourished into the Zimki platform one year later.
*The unfortunate shutdown of the Zimki platform in 2007 made some wonder whether hosted web platforms are potentially at risk from such closures. The clients had to remove their data and applications from the platform once its closure announced.
- Google launched a free trial version of its own PaaS in April 2008; their AppEngine platform suited 10 thousands developers; the initiative was not much of a success, since initially all PaaS attempts belonged to public clouds, an idea that dis not stimulate companies to go on-board with their data and operations. However the AppEngine is still up and running, and Google markets its features by the tagline “You simply upload your application and it’s ready to go.”
The current best in PaaS champions
PaaS providers have gained 10 years of experience, a lot of new vendors and clients. A Cloud Awards list mentions a few of the PaaS field best performers for 2015-2016:
- Dell Boomi (the Dell business unit founded in 2000 and sold to Dell in 2010 that specializes in cloud-based integration and related processes) – the definite winner; Dell Boomi presents itself as “the #1 integration cloud”.
- Progress (Progress Software is a Bedford, Massachusetts-based company, named a Visionary by Gartner in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Platform as a Service 2015, for its cloud-based application development platform)
Another source considers the contenders, leaders, niche providers and high performers for best PaaS 2016 by satisfaction, market presence, G2 score and so on. Microsoft Azure emerges as the definite winner in at least a couple of search refinement instances, while Salesforce App Cloud: Heroku Enterprise leads when looking for the most satisfactory PaaS.
A different set of contenders for an August 2015 PaaS vendors top ten comprised Amazon Elastic Beanstalk (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Centurylink Appfog, Cloudcontrol dotCloud, EngineYard, Google App Engine, IBM Bluemix, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, Redhat Openshift, and Salesforce Heroku (in a random order).
Yet another source ranked almost all the previous providers in a top 10 best providers dated April 2015, with the same Amazon Web Services – Elastic Beanstalk as the definite winner.
In the hope that you now have a rough idea on the best current PaaS providers, we leave you with the thought that quality, agile PaaS is essential for business cloud computing – therefore choosing the best provider is a turning point that deserves your utmost attention.
