Recently, Verizon announced its plans to add enterprise-class PaaS solutions and services to Verizon Cloud by joining the Cloud Foundry™ Community Advisory Board. This blog posts dives deep into PaaS models and discusses how businesses of all sizes can leverage the power of PaaS solutions.
- What is PaaS? – Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is a solution stack that enables developers to build and manage applications quickly without having to build development tools or worry about the underlying infrastructure. It reduces the amount of programming needed and it speeds a developer’s time to market. Although most platforms support multiple development environments PaaS solutions tend to have an affinity for popular software development environments. There are PaaS ecosystems for VMware, for java development environments, Ruby on Rails development environments and many others. There are specific PaaS development environments for big data, mobile and other applications categories.
- How does it relate to IaaS? – Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a basic cloud infrastructure solution in which the cloud provider offers base hardware and computing resources such as virtual machines, servers, storage, and network equipment. No software development tools, modules or applications are included in IaaS. IaaS is basic compute and storage services only. PaaS solutions include the software development environment. PaaS users do not have to configure or manage the underlying IaaS components.
- Why is it important to the Cloud Ecosystem? – PaaS solutions allow developers to write and create their own software applications very quickly. It provides developers with necessary tools to create, test, host and maintain applications. A great example is Facebook; developers are able to use it as a platform to create new unique applications, i.e. Words with Friends
- What does it do for clients – PaaS is a platform that enables Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and developers to develop and run their applications on cloud infrastructure without having to configure and manage the compute resources. It is a simpler, faster and more flexible way to deploy applications than traditional programming methods. The underlying infrastructure stack and software is managed by cloud provider. This allows the IT staff and developers to focus on innovation rather than management of complex infrastructure. It allows a faster time to market with less staff, less cost and more flexibility.
- Prevailing trends around PaaS – PaaS solutions reduce software development time from weeks to days to hours. PaaS solutions also encourage the use of DevOps processes like continuous integration, both startups and enterprises developers are heavy users of PaaS tools. For enterprises, PaaS solutions speed the development of mobile applications. As enterprises add support for more mobile devices PaaS is often used to build integration into existing systems. PaaS also encourages the development of software that runs on multiple platforms. Many developers have found that not having to worry about underlying compute and storage services makes projects more successful and speeds time to value. IDC reports that the PaaS market will continue to grow at 30% from 3.8 billion USD to 14 billion USD by 2017. (IDC)
- What additional value does it bring to Verizon Cloud Compute? PaaS users consume lots of compute and storage resources on Verizon Cloud. It lets us reach a new and large market very quickly. It helps us ramp up revenue (and usage) with a very low costs of sales. Supporting PaaS (one of the fastest growing cloud market segments) helps us grow market share rapidly. This initiative will help PaaS providers develop a preference for Verizon Cloud as the underlying infrastructure because Verizon cloud offers better control, security and performance than other cloud platforms.
- Why teaming with another technology company? -- PaaS solution stacks are complex with many modules that must work together to support developers who don’t want to deal with the complexity. Developing a PaaS offering internally would be expensive. Partnering with a leading PaaS solutions provider lets Verizon Cloud reach a new customer base very quickly.
- Why Pivotal? – Pivotal is a spin-off of VMware with heavy investment from GE and other partners. We are announcing support for Cloud Foundry. Cloud Foundry is Pivotal’s open source PaaS project aimed both at existing VMware customers and new open source customers. Cloud Foundry is a mature PaaS with hundreds of partners, developers and systems integrators and thousands of end-user customers. A combination of Pivotal/Cloud Foundry and Verizon Cloud is a compelling blend of the leading edge PaaS platform with a next generation cloud infrastructure giving customers more flexibility, more performance options and a wider geographical coverage than other offerings.
