What is Platform as a Service (PaaS)?

Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a category of cloud computing services that provides a platform allowing customers to develop, run, and manage applications without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure typically associated with developing and launching an app. PaaS can be delivered in three ways:

• As a public cloud service from a provider, where the consumer controls software deployment with minimal configuration options, and the provider provides the networks, servers, storage, operating system (OS), middleware (e.g. Java runtime, .NET runtime, integration, etc.), database and other services to host the consumer’s application.
• As a private service (software or appliance) inside the firewall.
• As software deployed on a public infrastructure as a service.

Like IaaS, PaaS includes infrastructure (servers, storage and networking) and also middleware, development tools, business intelligence (BI) services, database management systems and more. PaaS is designed to support the complete web application life-cycle: building, testing, deploying, managing and updating.

The advantages of PaaS are as follows:

• Cut coding time.
• Add development capabilities without adding staff.
• Develop for multiple platforms, including mobile, more easily.
• Use sophisticated tools affordably.
• Support geographically distributed development teams.
• Efficiently manage the application life-cycle.