In order to speed time to market and control development expenses, many enterprises are turning to platform as a service. This cloud-based solution offers the ability to develop new business applications, then run and manage them without investing in the underlying infrastructure necessary to support them. The service provider supplies the server and manages the allocation of resources.
The result is that enterprises pay only for the compute, network, and storage they use, while all infrastructure is managed by the provider and kept out of sight. The technology is being used in a variety of ways, from developing application programming interfaces and microservices to the creation of databases and supporting the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT).
Beyond its inherently simplified technology delivery model, platform as a service delivers three distinct benefits to enterprise IT:
- Flexibility: Platform as a service can be delivered in a public, private, or hybrid cloud model. With the public cloud, the enterprise controls the deployment while the provider delivers the IT components necessary to host applications, including the server, storage system, network, and operating system. A private cloud allows platform as a Service to be delivered in the form of software or an appliance inside the customer’s firewall. Hybrid cloud offers a mix of the two.
- Cost Savings: Platform as a service allows enterprises to create and deploy applications without investing the time and money in infrastructure to support costly servers and databases. It also saves resources in terms of the talent necessary to manage the infrastructure.
- Faster Deployment: The ability to develop new applications without first investing in and transitioning to new infrastructure means that applications are developed and delivered more quickly. This is an important advantage for businesses looking for new ways to gain a competitive edge in their industries.
Platform as a service also allows developers to test operating systems, new languages, and other technologies quickly because they are not also creating the supporting infrastructure. Additionally, tools can be upgraded more quickly in an environment supported with platform as a service.
You may be wondering if there are any reasons not to invest in platform as a service. There are risks related to security and vendor lock-in, but these are true of any cloud investment and can be managed with the right policies and protocols in place. You should carefully assess the security approach of any platform as a service provider that you are considering, and be sure that you identify any gaps in your security plane any time you partner with a cloud provider.
In terms of vendor lock-in, many enterprises mitigate this risk by utilizing more than one provider or by having a business continuity plan in place that includes plans for handling assets in case a provider goes out of business or fails to meet the service level agreement guarantees regarding uptime and other performance markers.
To learn more about platform as a service, contact us at Clarksys. We can help you evaluate whether utilizing a subscription model for infrastructure may provide measurable benefits for your application development team.