Cloud: is PaaS dead?

With the attention of CIOs and developers focusing on IaaS and SaaS, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is struggling to take off. But should we really consider it being at rest?

To start off, if you are not familiar with the way SaaS business model works, you can read Eleken's blog to understand the topic which we are going to be discussing today a little bit better.

Considering SaaS (Software as a Service) is praised by the majority of organizations, and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) solutions being very successful, PaaS, which joined the race much later, has not yet succeeded in establishing itself. Its performance is also well below first forecasts.

- To make the first observation, most developers opt for the IaaS model, which offers them the capacities of computing and storage platforms in particular. This contributes to the success of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

- The second observation, developers do not like to be restricted by a sandbox. This opinion comes from PaaS providers who impose restrictions on architectural components in the cloud, such as tools, databases and programming languages, which developers do not like.

- The third observation, IaaS seems to be a better fit than PaaS for DevOps organizations, as it provides the operational platforms that developers will ultimately have to use: those of the IaaS platform, as well as their local environments, where they can replicate it in IaaS cloud.

- Last observation, the lack of standardization in the offers of PaaS providers. Surely, the field adjusts itself to diversity, but each one emphasizes specific points, some on the database, some on programming languages, others on distinct standards. And the developer struggles to navigate and especially to find the answer to his questions, forced to follow a closed approach which is imposed by the supplier.

All of this contributes to limiting the success of PaaS. But does that mean the end of PaaS has come? In its original uses of PaaS, the latter has not met with the expected success. But it has not yet given the full spectrum of its abilities.

Announcing the death of PaaS is certainly premature. If IaaS is winning, the movement engaged in infrastructures could reserve a place, perhaps limited but of choice, for PaaS, in a hybrid approach between a cloud offering the criticality required for infrastructures and the strategic need to retain direct control over industrialized computing that has proven itself.


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