Everything Your Business Needs to Know About PaaS (Platform as a Service)

What Is Platform as a Service (PaaS) in Cloud Computing?

Much like infrastructure as a service (IaaS), PaaS is a cloud-based computing model. However, PaaS offers additional services beyond IaaS.

With infrastructure as a service, a provider like Stratus Innovations Group supplies virtualized infrastructure for computing, storage, and networking. PaaS takes this model a step further with the provider offering additional services to users. For example, they can incorporate operating systems, databases, runtime systems, and other middleware into the cloud.

With PaaS, businesses don’t have to worry about hardware for data storage, computing, and other infrastructure, and they don’t need to spend time and resources maintaining an optimized, secure, and stable software environment. Instead, essential operations are shifted to the cloud, allowing users to access their environment at any time and from any location.

What Is PaaS Used For?

PaaS can be implemented via private, public, or hybrid cloud, so businesses of any size can benefit from this powerful cloud computing model. In fact, PaaS has applications in everything from basic IT needs to building new revenue streams for businesses. Below are some of the most common uses of PaaS.

Rapid, Scalable Application Development

For many businesses, PaaS is used for application development and management. The PaaS vendor builds a stable cloud environment for creating, deploying, and hosting apps, and developers can then focus all their efforts and expertise on rapidly building and implementing their applications.

Development tools and libraries provided by the PaaS vendor can also significantly reduce the coding time for apps since pre-coded elements can be built directly into the platform. Directory services, search features, security capabilities, and other functionality can quickly and easily be incorporated into applications with existing code from the platform. And PaaS vendors like Stratus Innovations Group have access to much more sophisticated tools at a much more reasonable price point than most organizations could afford on their own.

Building, Testing, and Managing APIs

PaaS isn’t only used for app development. Many businesses use PaaS to build and test the application programming interface (API) for their apps. Your platform can include standard APIs such as REST, SOAP, and more. APIs allow users and applications to interact with your software in clearly defined ways. For example, you could restrict access to your app to users within your company. Or, you could define exactly what data should be available from your app to outside users and programs.

Once your API has been built and tested, PaaS allows you to manage it. Managing your APIs involves securing data, monitoring traffic, ensuring quality of service (QoS), and more. With IT infrastructure in the cloud, businesses and their IT teams can focus on managing their applications and APIs instead of maintaining all the hardware and staff needed to run them.

Business Intelligence, Insights, and Analytics

Approximately 78% of organizations plan to increase their use of the cloud for business intelligence (BI) and data management in the coming year. This should come as no surprise. Big data can become a big problem for companies when infrastructure and IT needs balloon in the face of large quantities of data (even when that data leads to real insights, not just more incomprehensible spreadsheets, charts, and reports). PaaS is the solution. With unlimited scalability, gaining the power of additional IT resources is essentially instantaneous. When resources or demand increase or slow down, so can your use of PaaS.

This not only helps businesses manage costs, but it also helps them manage risk. Rather than purchasing and setting up all of the necessary space, hardware, and software on premises for a major BI initiative, companies can simply scale up their PaaS resources. And rather than being stuck with the enormous long-term costs of owning the infrastructure, they can simply cancel their cloud-based subscription if they need to shut down a project.

Deploying and Managing Business and Industrial IoT

The internet of things (IoT) is driving business value in novel ways, including remote connectivity, real-time status reports, predictive maintenance, new revenue models, and more. The ability to customize and control both applications and data via PaaS means that your business can integrate diverse IoT devices in ways that will provide meaningful, pragmatic insights.

By shifting infrastructure resources and management to the cloud, PaaS lets companies focus on leveraging the possibilities of IoT rather than getting bogged down with just making the use of IoT possible.

LEARN MORE: Intelligent Factory Solution Offering

In addition to the common uses for PaaS above, businesses can take advantage of PaaS for process management, communications integration, database creation, and much more. The inherent flexibility of platform-as-a-service cloud solutions means that nearly every organization could find a use for PaaS that would help boost their bottom line in some way.

The Cost-Saving Benefits of PaaS

Businesses can implement PaaS in a wide variety of ways, and it can also be incredibly cost-effective. Here are just a few reasons why:

PaaS Has a Predictable, Scalable Pay-Per-Use Pricing Model for Cloud Resources

No more costly hardware. No more swelling IT budgets. Much lower risk for data losses, outages, security threats, and other catastrophes. Simply pay for what you need when you need it.

Nearly Limitless Customizability Leads to Remarkable Efficiencies

Collect and translate your data into practical, insightful interfaces. Use technology to optimize and facilitate your business processes instead of adjusting your workflows to suit each program. Expand access to your infrastructure and applications. With PaaS, you can create value for your organization in numerous ways.

Automatic Updates, Management Support, and More

Take the worry out of your IT and focus on moving your business forward. PaaS shifts all your day-to-day IT operations workload to an expert provider like Stratus Innovations Group so you can get back to business and out of the business of IT.

Unlock the Full Potential of PaaS With Stratus Innovation Group

Ultimately, the greatest benefit of PaaS is its flexibility for a wide variety of innovative uses. Stratus Innovations Group can help your business build a PaaS solution that perfectly suits your needs. We can even help you plan, construct, and manage customized cloud-based applications that drive real business value.

To speak with one of our experts, call 844-561-6721 or fill out our quick and easy contact form. We focus exclusively on leading-edge cloud solutions that help organizations increase efficiency and profitability. We’ll help you bring the power of the cloud to your business!

Reference

Columbus, L. (2017, February 26). Business intelligence and analytics in the cloud, 2017. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2017/02/26/business-intelligence-and-analytics-in-the-cloud-2017/#6a19ecdca289