Platform as a Service (PaaS) provides a platform on which software can be created and launched. It is mostly used by software developers to access a development platform and provision computer infrastructure. Users can then create software applications through software components that are created in the PaaS.

The main advantage of the PaaS model is that all applications built on this platform inherit all the characteristics of the cloud. Software development, testing, and launching are also much faster on PaaS, as it requires lesser coding and helps in migrating applications to hybrid clouds. Users can manage servers, storage, and networking more efficiently using a PaaS.

Examples of PaaS services include AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Windows Azure, Heroku, Salesforce, Google App Engine, and Apache Stratos.