Application modernization and app development are the operational vehicles that propel today’s enterprises. As the cloud platform for developing, running, and managing applications, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the engine under that enterprise hood.
This links the growth of PaaS and application efficiency that makes enterprises faster and more agile. Researchers estimate PaaS growth will be worth 101 billion U.S. dollars in 2022, according to Statista. It’s the nature of PaaS that sets the pace for how enterprises can use the cloud as fuel to:
- Innovate
- Deliver better services
- Decrease operational costs
- Develop new markets and products
- Increase market share and competitive positioning.
We’ve explored (PaaS) along with IaaS and SaaS cloud computing models in previous blog posts. This time we’ll inspect PaaS in the age of cloud-native and application modernization.
The Nature of PaaS in a Cloud World
As a complete platform, PaaS frees enterprise developers and the enterprise from the huge Opex and time investment associated with building their own platforms in on-prem data centers. By essentially renting what they need to build an application from cloud providers, developers gain access to development tools, infrastructure, and operating systems. The key is that the PaaS provider hosts everything at their data centers, including:
- Servers
- Networks
- Storage
- Operating system software
- Databases
- Development tools
- Middleware
The top three cloud providers that include AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure all provide PaaS with proprietary cloud components to make adoption easier. Just a few of the options available from these and other providers include:
- Google App Engine
- AWS Elastic Beanstalk
- Microsoft Azure App Service
- Cloud Foundry
- Red Hat OpenShift
- Salesforce Heroku
It’s true that 95 percent of enterprises have adopted some form of cloud use. But there are still a great deal of cloud misconceptions that keep many from capitalizing on cloud environment options for application strategies. Understanding how PaaS works to support specific business outcomes is an important step in achieving those maximum benefits of applications and the cloud.
How PaaS Works and its Benefits for Business Outcomes
The GUI online interface of PaaS providers delivers all standard development tools that enable developers to work and collaborate on projects from anywhere at the same time. The PaaS provider manages the larger share of the compute services such as servers, runtime, and virtualization while your enterprise’s IT team handles application and data management.
We’ve established that application development and modernization are the key to business stability, flexibility, and growth via increased innovation and services, along with lower costs. Just some benefits of PaaS that enable those attributes in the enterprise include:
- Minimizing Time to Market by eliminating hardware purchase/install for AppDev platform so developers can immediately begin provisioning resources via the cloud service provider’s PaaS
- More resources with Affordable Access through varied operating systems, middleware, databases, and development tools
- Reduced Risk and Increased Experimentation via OS, languages, and tools testing without enormous investments
- Simple Up or Down Scalability with additional compute, storage, and networking capacity available as needed
- Increased Developer Team Flexibility via shared development environment
- Lower Capex and Opex by avoiding platform hardware, management, and maintenance costs for patching, updating, and other administrative tasks
All these benefits fuel the needs of the broader pursuit of application modernization and the ideal of a cloud-native architecture for your enterprise. Let’s look at some ways PaaS works to support enterprise IT and operations through app modernization and cloud-native development.
How PaaS Supports Application Modernization and Cloud-Native Development
For enterprises to remain competitive and innovative in the marketplace, their applications must change and grow to meet the business and the market’s changing needs. The integrated and ready-to-use foundation of PaaS is essential to application development and modernization by supporting IT and business outcomes through:
- API development and management
- Internet of Things (IoT) by delivering broad programming language, tools, and application environments used for IoT and AI application development and real-time processing of data generated by IoT devices
- Agile development and DevOps across the application lifecycle, including integration, delivery, security, testing, and deployment
- Hybrid and Multi-cloud Strategy that enables a unified and flexible distributed computing environment through a build once, deploy and manage anywhere foundation for legacy and cloud-native applications
- Cloud migration and cloud-native development for simplifying application migration and scalability, load balancing, and other capabilities) or refactoring (re-architecting some or all of an application using microservices, containers, and other cloud-native technologies)
This last aspect of containerization and microservices are integral to delivering the flexibility and innovation of services that are a hallmark of PaaS and application architectures. It is their ability to work within a PaaS architecture that makes can make these business possibilities a reality.
Cloud, PaaS, and Containers Fuel Business Speed and Maneuverability
PaaS and containers work together in application modernization through the different app migration processes where chosen legacy apps require refactoring or rearchitecting on the path to cloud native application development. PaaS typically enables users to deploy applications, such as web applications and custom services, without the time and expense of platform development. They do this by providing a complete platform that delivers many tools, programming languages, and greater scalability to meet business outcome needs.
PaaS is not a solution for every application modernization and development need. But it is a vital building block for many enterprises looking for ways to make it easier, more efficient, and more affordable to reach specific business outcomes. To learn more about how Techolution can partner with you on making your cloud and app modernization journey faster, flexible, and simpler while reaching targeted business outcomes, visit our cloud services page.
