Why Platform as a Service (PaaS) is the answer to high-performance hosting

Running, compiling or configuring your web application on a single virtual server instance can be complex as well as time-consuming.

Let’s understand how Forbes has termed Platform as a Service (PaaS) to be the dominant cloud service model and why it stands as the best suited solution for your high-performance hosting needs.

Understanding Platform as a Service

PaaS service delivery model has evolved from Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud offering. It allows the customer to make use of virtualized servers by not purchasing them directly but renting it so as to design, develop, test, deploy and host a web application.

PaaS vendors offer the following along with the cloud offering:

1. Specific software development tools such as source code editor, a debugger, a compiler, and other essential tools which developers needs to build their application.
2. Middleware which acts as an intermediate between user-facing applications and the machine's operating system.
3. Operating system for developers to build an application.
4. Databases to store data and for developers to administer and maintain them.
5. Infrastructure to manage servers, storage, and physical data centers.

Why choose PaaS over IaaS and SaaS?

Before comparing PaaS with Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and SaaS, it is important to understand what each service means and how it helps users achieve their goals.

Let’s understand each one by comparing them with modes of transportation.

On- premises IT infrastructure is like owning a car. When you own a car, you take the responsibility for its maintenance.

IaaS is like renting a car. You choose the car as per your own preference and drive it wherever you wish. And when you think of upgrade, you can simply rent a different car. SaaS is like taking a public transport, wherein you share your ride with other fellow passengers with a common route.

However, PaaS can be thought of opting for a cab, wherein you don’t drive the car by yourself, but pay the driver to take you to your destination.Now after understanding what each means, let’s compare IaaS, PaaS and SaaS on the basis of what service you manage (✔) and what you don’t (╳).

As per Gartner, global public cloud services market is expected to grow to over $383 billion by 2020.

Perfectly suited for software developers, PaaS helps them deploy applications and test and manage them without needing all the related infrastructure.

It’s very different from the traditional forms of web hosting like shared or Virtual Private Server hosting, wherein the developer has to take up the responsibility of ensuring the production environment is good enough to host their application and set up the application server, database, run-time platform, set up server configuration and many more, before beginning to code.

With HTTP caching servers, PaaS ensures faster application loading and eliminates issues like latency and downtime even if one server goes down. Applications can be deployed to the servers with a single command. It is useful for high-traffic websites (when your server may be under heavy load) which have performance issues in a shared environment.

PaaS can be thought of as a multi-server high performance solution which virtually distributes the web traffic across multiple terminals, keeping your site performance at peak.

High speed hosting services not only improves the user experience of your site, but they also have a positive impact on search engine ranking and users are likely to stay longer on the site as the site speed and resource delivery will be quick.

Here are 5 advantages that PaaS offers over other cloud offerings:

1. Helps Build Applications Quickly
PaaS allows developers to build applications quickly than they would possibly build, configure, and provision with their own platforms and backend infrastructure. With PaaS vendors providing web servers, storage, networking resources, it allows them to gain instant access to a complete software development environment, without any need of configuring or maintaining them and focus mainly on delivering projects speedily.

PaaS services offer templates and code libraries to allow rapid development by providing prebuilt backend infrastructure and other resources. It offers new capabilities to your in-house development team without hiring additional staff, thereby reducing costs associated with development in building applications from scratch.

3. Easy Collaboration on Pre-Built Sophisticated Tools
PaaS offers advantage over traditional hosting in a way it lets developers in distributed teams to collaborate. It allows them to create applications using pre-built software otherwise expensive development tools to develop, test and reiterate.

The reusable code not only facilitates easy app development and deployment but also increases the opportunity for scalability. This allows businesses to scale and modify their product or processes efficiently and focus on core business initiatives rather than maintaining underlying IT infrastructure.

PaaS cloud services support developers to build applications on multiple programming languages.

How is PaaS different from Serverless Computing?

PaaS and serverless computing are similar in a way where a developer has to worry about working on code, and the vendor handles all backend processes. However, it is different from serverless computing as mentioned in the below table:

Any demerits?

However, before taking the decision to opt for PaaS process, it is important to understand your business needs in order to find a solution that is a good fit.

Firstly, the decision for PaaS providers should be taken wisely as you might not be able to switch the vendor after an application is built. Each vendor may not support the same languages, libraries, APIs, architecture, or operating system used to build and run applications. Although it is possible to switch PaaS providers, the process can be time consuming and may even result in rebuilding the application to fit the new platform.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the external vendor will store most or all of an application’s data, along with hosting its code and may actually store the databases via a third party. So it is important to test the security measures of the service provider and you should know their security and compliance protocols before making the decision.

Srijan can help you take the truly strategic option of opting for PaaS out of various options, so as to potentially deliver more with better functionality. Contact us to get the conversation started.