Damian Szewczyk
As you know, I have long been interested in cloud computing and what capabilities it offers. That’s why today I wanted to introduce you to one of the models of this service – PaaS, and share my observations about it.
You can read about what the cloud is here, I’ll only cover one part of it today. PaaS, or Platform as a Service, is a cloud computing platform aimed at developers. To use the service, you don’t need anything more than a computer and a network connection – everything you need to work, i.e. the hardware and environment, is stored in the cloud, and we connect to it via a client, which could be Google Chrome or Opera, for example! PaaS services include application design, development, testing, deployment and sharing. Other services include teaming capabilities, web services integration, database integration, security or scalability. Using this service, we don’t have to worry about anything other than writing applications. Taking care of the stability of the system, updating and securing it is taken care of by the service provider. If we want to move our code to another service provider we may have a problem with this, as some offer a cloud with generic languages, while others offer their own solutions. As long as we want to move from a generic environment to a generic one, there won’t be the slightest problem with it. Complications may arise if we want to move, for example, from a service offered by Google to a generic environment.
In short, PaaS is, for example, PHP, Ruby, Java, C++ available and ready to work from a browser. PaaS is located “in between” IaaS, or Infrastructure as a Service, which is the foundation of cloud computing, and SaaS – Software as a Service, standing highest and covering the smallest area in the “cloud pyramid.” In the case of the IaaS model, the service recipient gets a virtual machine, tailored to its requirements (RAM, HDD, CPU), to which we provide the operating system and the software and applications we need. In the SaaS model, on the other hand, the recipient purchases a specific service, such as a website builder.
In my opinion, PaaS as well as the entire cloud are the future of the Internet and the entire IT industry. Already there is a tendency for companies, in an effort to save money, to reduce their departments, and hire outsiders for particular tasks, focusing only on what is their narrow specialization. This allows you to reduce costs, and go up with the efficiency of creating a product or service that is sold. This is where the future lies. And that’s why Platform as a Service may soon become the primary platform on which applications will be developed. Using PaaS will allow the developer to focus on what he knows best, which is writing lines of code. By creating in the cloud, the programmer shifts the entire burden of reigning over what lies beneath the application to the service provider, i.e. someone who does it every day and knows it far better than you or your colleague! You don’t play administrator, you don’t worry about the hardware or stability of the environment in which you write and test your application. You get a tool to dynamically manage the resources you use, you use what you need.
The anticipated popularity of PaaS has become a reality. In 2011, 9% of users used the PaaS service, and 25% of users were considering using it. The following year, the number of PaaS users increased by 7 percentage points to 16%.
A big change can be seen in 2018. According to IDG research, 61% of cloud users have used the PaaS service. This gives a clear picture that PaaS is still a service on the rise and its popularity is not stopping. Research predicts its systematic development.
What do you guys think about PaaS and cloud computing? Share your opinions!
