Cloud Computing/PaaS: Application Vendor Shift to PaaS Delivery Fuels PaaS Market Growth

March 7, 2012 Off By David
Grazed from FormTek.  Author: Dick Weisinger.

Platform as a service (PaaS) is a type of cloud computing which provides  core elements of computing infrastructure over the Internet, such as operating systems, storage and network capacity.  PaaS  simplifies the deployment of new software since it eliminates the need to set up, manage and maintain the underlying hardware, software and provisioning on which the application runs.
 
Benefits of PaaS include the following:..
 

  • The centralized cloud model allows software like operating systems to be more easily and frequently upgraded
  • The distributed nature of the cloud allows teams from different geographic location to more easily collaborate on projects
  • Services can be distributed across different geographic locations
  • Initial and on-going costs for initiating and maintaining the infrastructure can be reduced
  • Increased Business agility
One problem though is that adopting PaaS brings with it the risk of vendor lock-in.
A recent report by Gartner finds that many software application vendors are adopting PaaS as a vehicle for selling their solutions, and the report predicts that the PaaS market segment is poised for huge growth over the near term.

Yefim Natis, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, said that “with large and growing vendor investment in PaaS, the market is on the cusp of several years of strategic growth, leading to innovation and likely breakthroughs in technology and business use of all of cloud computing.  Users and vendors of enterprise IT software solutions that are not yet engaged with PaaS must begin building expertise in PaaS or face tough challenges from competitors in the coming years.”

Federal CIO Steve VanRoekel has identified PaaS as “the next major value set for federal cloud computing, and it also aligns closely with his Shared Services initiative to knock down stovepipe software and save money.”

PaaS is expected to evolve into a major segment of the overall cloud computing market, and there is likely a similarity between how PaaS will grow and the strong growth paths followed by SOA and other middleware products in the last decade.  On this topic, Natis said that “PaaS products are likely to evolve into a major component of the overall cloud computing market, just as the middleware products – including application servers, database management systems (DBMSs), integration middleware and portal platforms – are the core foundation of the traditional software industry.  The tension between the short-term risk and the long-term strategic imperative of PaaS will define the key developments in the PaaS market during the next two to three years.”

 
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