What Is the PaaS Model and How Can It Help My Tech Team?

The PaaS model offers opportunities for innovation, increased capacity, growth, and success with customers. The term PaaS stands for ‘platform as a service,’ which means what it sounds like: in the PaaS model, the end user accesses a platform for on-demand software or applications, through a web browser.

With the PaaS model, the cloud is where development tools for software or applications live. This means that PaaS enables you, as a customer, to develop and deploy applications that you create. And it allows you to manage and run those applications as well as any others that you acquire elsewhere.
The PaaS model provides your business with all of the infrastructure needed to make your application or software work correctly, including servers, database management, analytics, mobile backend, integration services, and more.
With the PaaS model, your PaaS provider handles the technical details, so all you have to manage is the application code itself.

Benefits of the PaaS model – Easy Deployment

Getting your application or software to market as quickly and accurately as possible is key to business success.
This model saves money and time immediately. Your developers do no need to set up the core stack required to develop and deploy your program. Nor do they need to spend time or money maintaining these resources. For every application you create, you are saving time and resources, making your business a lot more economical.
Using the PaaS model, it is easy for your developers to test various configurations of apps and software, including on different machines and at different locations to find any bugs and fix them outside of the local environment.
With this fast testing capability, your team will be able to deploy new business offerings that much quicker, giving you a competitive edge.
The availability of resources using the PaaS model also allows for quicker deployment times, as your DevOps team will no longer have to devote a lot of time to locating and maintaining systems. Your team can spend its time on development and deployment instead, promoting innovation. These resources can also be shared across numerous DevOps teams so you save money overall.

Benefits of the PaaS model – Scalability and Cutting Edge Tech

As with nearly any cloud service, scalability is a big bonus of using the PaaS model. With pay-as-you-use cloud computing, your business only needs to budget for the data and resources you use — no more and no less.
When you require additional data, it’s easy to allocate more resources. Deallocation is just as simple. The testing and deployment of applications and software can be unpredictable in terms of resource use, so this flexibility can mean a lot of cost savings for your company.
Similarly, you can rely on the PaaS model to provide you with cutting edge technology, without having to invest in it directly every time something new comes into the industry. Your PaaS provider will be dedicated to optimizing every part of the platform, employing the best technology and resources to keep the model running perfectly for their own customers.
There is a lot that goes into deploying a program and your stack is complex. With the PaaS model, you can rely on your provider to maintain, update, and improve upon the platform, without needing to worry about it yourself.

Benefits of the PaaS model – Automation and Security

Automation is a big part of the PaaS model. This aids in productivity and consistency for your team. The more you can automate, the more time DevOps staff can spend on developing and deploying new offerings, and the less room there is for human error.
Despite the ease of automation, there is no need to worry about security, as the PaaS model offers a great deal of built in security and data protection features, from disaster recovery services to backups.
You may even find that your business experiences less downtime. Because the PaaS model leaves configuration and other more technical details to the cloud provider, you do not need to worry about on-site staff making accidental errors that could impact your web application. This creates a more secure, enjoyable environment for your business, and, most importantly, your customers.
If you do run into any problems with security, automation, or other issues with the platform, you are not stuck trying to figure it out on your own. With the PaaS model in place, you will be able to access support from your provider, often 24/7.
If you tried to have on demand support from your own staff, you could be looking at hefty overtime costs. Through outsourcing to a PaaS provider, however, you get the peace of mind that comes with working with experts in the field who are always there to help.

The PaaS Model: A Growing Solution in the Tech Industry

If you are interested in the PaaS model, you are not alone.
According to Forbes, “Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) adoption is predicted to be the fastest-growing sector of cloud platforms according to KPMG, growing from 32% in 2017 to 56% adoption in 2020.”
Other numbers show that spending on PaaS could hit $7.5 billion according to Global Industry Analysts, and that Gartner believes 50 per cent of PaaS spending could be focused on the Internet of Things market by 2020.

Clearly, PaaS is not going away. It is set to grow even larger and to be adopted by more companies and industries as time goes on. The benefits are many. Practically any business involved in the development and deployment of applications and programs can see a positive impact by trying this technology. As more and more companies move toward cloud computing, opting to put as much as possible in the cloud rather than spending time and resources to keep it on site, PaaS represents a great way to optimize and streamline.