[blippr]Platform as a service (PaaS) is one of most emerging topic in internet these days. PaaS is one of the important element in cloud computing. This article is Introduction to PaaS – from a series of article on PaaS – Platform as a service on techgearz.
What is PaaS?
According to wiki: “Platform as a Service” or “PaaS” is a computing platform used to deliver “Software as a Service” or SaaS. In a layman’s term, its a platform available as a service to develop web applications without actually worrying about the hardware infrastructure and software layer required for developing and deploying application.
PaaS is purely web based solution, you don’t have to download or install any software for developing your web applications / services. Most of PaaS based services come with the capability of developing workflow & web services bases applications, you can test and host the application in few steps. Developer can login to PaaS and start developing his application on internet and he need not store any thing on his PC /Mac.
This platform allows multiple people to collaboratively work on an application, irrespective of their geographical locations.
Why to use PaaS ?
Traditionally when an organization is planning or building an enterprise application, they need to plan for hardware infrastructure, operating system, selecting software platforms like Java, .Net or PHP to develop those applications and so on. And if the application is complex they need to have a huge infrastructure with 24×7 electricity supply, high cooling systems and heavy bandwidth which is attached with a huge cost.
PaaS solves all of these problems for you, it provides you with infrastructure required to run your complex applications on internet and you will pay only for the services you are using. It has easy to develop interface, plugins and widgets which help you to develop the application faster. With PaaS, you can concentrate more on the innovations so that you can come up with your applications and stop worrying about the infrastructure you required to deploy the same.
[Coming sessions we will get in dept of PaaS and the solutions in PaaS ...]
About cloudPaaS – A PaaS Knowledge base.
cloudPaaS is a Free, Open Knowledge base on PaaS. An Open-Organization formed with the intention of spreading the knowledge about PaaS and the benefits of using PaaS in your organization.
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PaaS is quite a broad term and has many definitions -
One definition is, as you describe, to have EVERYTIING on the web, and THE ONLY interface is a web browser (this is also our vision) lets call this the webPaaS -
For most of the PaaS provider however, the development still happens in locally installed tools: Microsoft Azure still uses Visual Studio for code writing, and Google Appengine some Java editor -
The difference between PaaS and SaaS is however, that you upload source code, and not binaries …
I agree, even salesforce.com has an AIR – based desktop tool, but finally everything is save on web or on remote location.
[plez correct me if i am wrong]
Hope we will have some more debate and discussion on the same on [cloudPaaS] and Techgearz coming with more such articles on PaaS