What is application Platform-as-a-Service

Syxtus

August 13th, 2019 • Software development

The coming of the internet gave rise to an era in human history that changed everything. It accelerated the development of society in a shorter amount of time than any other technology created. With this came the birth of the Cloud. It is a kind of internet-based computing that provides an always-present, on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. Now, we have aPaaS (sometimes just PaaS) which means Application Platform As a Service. Here, we are going to be talking about the concept of aPaaS, and why you should know about it.

Cloud computing and virtualization is important and talked about often today because it is the future of IT. Back in the 80s when PCs were just being debuted, that was the biggest thing, now everything is about cloud technology. It does not matter which one you are using - Public, Private, or Hybrid clouds, they remain very significant in the future of IT.

One of the problems we frequently face is that when people are talking about cloud technology and services, they always talk about it as if it is one homogeneous thing. But in actual sense, the cloud is actually lots of different technologies, architectures, and different ways to solve tasks or build solutions. So you should be careful and more specific when talking about the cloud to professional technologists because generalizing the term will not mean much to them.

What is aPaaS?

Platform as a Service (PaaS) can be viewed as an application infrastructure functionality filled with cloud characteristics that is offered as a service. Therefore, application Platform as a Service (aPaaS) is a PaaS that supports the development, deployment, and execution of applications in a cloud. It includes other resources like Infrastructure as a service (Iaas) and Software as a Service (SaaS). aPaaS solutions are basically for programmers, startup companies, or a company that has proprietary software looking for a platform to run it. So, when you buy a PaaS, you get a base platform that will run the code you put into it.

The simplest concept of aPaaS is the old-fashioned shared-hosting plan from one of the web service providers such as godaddy.com. You do not need to worry about RAM, processor, updates. All you need to do is to get one folder and to put your code into it. This code will use the services that are provided by the platform to run.

Benefits of application-Platform-as-a-Service

There are several factors that can persuade people to use a service or a platform. Just having a cool platform or service name will not suffice. Users need to know and see what they will benefit from using the service, in this case - aPaaS. With the coming of digital transformation, the expectation for time-to-market of an application is fast, the demand for web apps has skyrocketed and keeps increasing, talented developers have become difficult to recruit. To face these challenges, aPaaS is worth consideration. The benefits of aPaaS can be described in terms of operational agility and productivity. So, here are some of the benefits:

Rapid application development tools

With PaaS, it is possible to use rapid application development tools to build your web app. These tools make building an app simple and fast. Even citizen developers can build working solutions and implement business logic. For example, one of the best rapid application development tools that you can start using is the Codejig App builder.

Low-code

You do not have to be a professional programmer to create business apps using aPaaS solutions. Due to the availability of low code tools and aPaaS, a new class of developers has emerged which is called “citizen developers”. Citizen developers are able to use these platforms to build apps without much programming skills.

PaaS significantly reduces the development time of apps from years to months and days with the help of low code development platforms. This occurs because aPaas provides an already-made template for apps. It writes, tries, and optimizes the base code for the user. This ensures that the developers do not need to build the app from scratch.

Scalability

With the increase in the demand for business apps and working solutions, the job of developers has increased exponentially. Developers have to deal with the pressure of building creative solutions within a short time.

With PaaS and low code platforms, they are able to scale their resources depending on the amount of work available. Also, citizen developers are able to step in and alleviate some of the workloads from professionals. With this, skilled developers are able to concentrate on more pressing issues.

Cloud Services

The expense and difficulty of hosting infrastructure locally have been eliminated because all this has been transferred to the cloud. This is made possible by the inherited IaaS and SaaS nature of aPaaS. You do not need to bother about hardware or interruptions due to updates. Everything is taken care of by the cloud.

You can acquire aPaaS through a subscription model which allows you to accurately estimate your budget. With this, the developers can concentrate on the quality of apps produced instead of the logistics of running app development tools and services.

Word of caution

Now that you get to know about aPaaS and its benefits, it is not a good idea to go diving into it headfirst without noting a few things.

One of the things you need to check is what the platform actually provides. This can be a big deal, especially now that the platforms have become more complicated and offer more solutions but they can also be more difficult to use. You need to make sure that any of your web apps can run on the platform.

Also, you need to trust that the platform will be around for a very long time. Migrating your web apps from one platform to another can be anywhere from easy to almost impossible. For example, let’s say you created your web app and the platform you are using goes away and you have to migrate to another.

Another thing you need to take note when searching for aPaaS solution to use is its performance. It is important to make sure that the I/O (Input/Output) performance is good. This means the speed at which the OS can take data stored on the hard drive and send them to end-users. The speed and responsiveness of your web app depend on it.

Conclusion

PaaS solutions are a great way to help your business transition to modern app development, in this era of digital transformation where agile, adaptive tools, and citizen developers are the means to compete. You need to weigh its benefits and see if aPaaS is something you can benefit from.