Chapter 7
Standing on Platform as a Service
In This Chapter
Defining PaaS
Recognizing traditional development and deployment challenges
Understanding how PaaS changes the development and deployment process
Integrating PaaS
Appreciating the different types of PaaS
Exploring the business benefits of PaaS
Software development and deployment have always been complex and ever-changing processes. Over time, continual demands have been placed on developers to change software to keep up with new technology trends and changing customer demands. The very definition of what qualifies as a customer is changing dramatically. Today, a customer may be a division within your own company, a business partner, or a buyer of services. At the same time, more companies are creating and deploying software that requires them to work closely with partners to create innovative software-based products, which means the development and deployment processes are much more complicated than ever before.
Development projects may involve many more developers in several locations. In addition, these developers must contend with a variety of configurations, multiple versions of operating systems and middleware, and complex integration with data and processes. The need to abstract complexity away from the teams charged with managing these processes has never been greater.
To help manage this growing level of complexity, many companies are looking at cloud computing as a more streamlined application development and deployment platform. Platform as a Service (PaaS) is an environment that abstracts the details and complexity of the development process. As a result, PaaS offers the potential for much more flexibility that enables developers to more quickly and efficiently meet customer demands.
To help you better understand what PaaS is and the business problems it solves, we cover its characteristics in this chapter. We also provide a perspective on how PaaS fits with other important cloud services and how it operates in a hybrid environment.