Platform as a Service: How Does It Work? And What Does It Mean?

Introduction

With fast-paced technological advancements taking place across the globe, it can be seen that businesses are now more proactive on technological fronts than ever before. Consequently, the pressing need to ensure that the business is at the forefront on all technologically related grounds has created upward pressure.

It is a challenge because inculcating high-end technology into business operations is often not as easy as it sounds. Several barriers prevent companies from executing this properly because they are always at a risk of being left behind from the ever-increasing competition.

Platform as a Service is one service delivery, which has marginally helped companies retain their competitive edge and ensure that they can keep up with the market trends in advancement and innovation.

It has helped companies to survive without having to bear hefty costs associated with infrastructure building and maintenance.

What does it meant by Platform as a Service?

Platform as a Service can be defined as a cloud computing model, enabling companies and businesses to utilize their infrastructure.

It allows them to fully utilize their development and deployment environment, which is essential to build otherwise quite expensive programs. Furthermore, cloud computing is the main premise, which greatly enables users to understand web application development conveniently.

When it comes to Platform as A Service, the main selling point is the fact that they offer their user’s database management and development tools at a much competitive price.

The main advantage of such platforms is that they can be accessed via any internet connection across the globe. This is primarily because the development-related environment is not hosted locally. Therefore, it gives the developers the liberty to work from anywhere around the world.

The main offerings that are part and parcel of Product as a Service Platforms are development tools, middleware, operating systems, database management, and infrastructure.

How does Platform as a Service Work?

Platform as a Service is considered a model of cloud computing where a third-party (the platform provider) provides a service of delivering some hardware and software tools that are mostly needed for web application development to customers over the internet.

Organizations mainly use Platform as a Service for three main reasons. Firstly, as mentioned earlier, it is used to provide a framework to the developers to create applications. Secondly, Platform as a Web Service is also used for purposes of business analytics.

Business Intelligence and Business Analytics tend to be some of the most important elements in modern-day business. Therefore, platform as a Service also covers this particular component. Lastly, Platform as a Service might also offer applications like workflow, directory, security, and scheduling.

There are numerous examples of PaaS. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the most predominant examples of Platform as a Service. Similarly, Beanstalk, Windows Azure, Google App Engine, and OpenShift are all popular platforms categorized as Platform as a Service.

The high popularity of the platform as a service is primarily vested because it allows the developers to access the market relatively quickly. This is because the infrastructure already exists. Therefore, development is likely to be executed quickly because most of the work has already been taken care of.

Similarly, it can also be seen that Platform as a Service is the fact that licensing is something that is taken care of by the service providers. So, therefore, the developers do not find themselves in a tough spot for licensing and subsequent bottlenecks when it comes to the launch because that has already been taken care of.

Conclusion

Therefore, PaaS can be defined as a much-needed service for web developers that can help businesses aim for higher efficiency and productivity regarding developer-related costs. Furthermore, it is considered to be a viable investment for developers because it marginally brings down the costs that would otherwise be associated with the development process.

However, it can be seen that developers and business owners need to pick out the service providers very carefully because if this decision is taken incorrectly, it might be harder to switch because of a lack of cross-compatibility across different platforms.