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Platform as a service

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Platform as a service (PaaS) is a category of cloud computing services that provides a computing platform and a solution stack as a service.[1] Along with software as a service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS), it is a service model of cloud computing. In this model, the consumer creates an application or service using tools and/or libraries from the provider. The consumer also controls software deployment and configuration settings. The provider provides the networks, servers, storage, and other services that are required to host the consumer's application.[2]

PaaS offerings facilitate the deployment of applications or services without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware and software and provisioning hosting capabilities.[3] All "as-a-service" offerings are characterized as providing low initial cost, incremental cost as your service usage grows, self-service, best practices built-in, resource sharing, automated deployment, management services, lifecycle management, reuse.[4] PaaS provides these capabilities for application and service development.[5]

There are various types of PaaS vendors; however, all offer application hosting and a deployment environment, along with various integrated services. Services offer varying levels of scalability and maintenance.[6]

PaaS offerings may also include facilities for application design, application development, testing, and deployment as well as services such as team collaboration, web service integration, and marshalling, database integration, security, scalability, storage, persistence, state management, application versioning, application instrumentation, and developer community facilitation.

Besides the service engineering aspects, PaaS offerings include mechanisms for service management, such as monitoring, workflow management, discovery, reservation, etc.[7][8]

Types

Add-on development facilities
These facilities customization of existing software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, and in some ways are the equivalent of macro language customization facilities provided with packaged software applications such as Lotus Notes, or Microsoft Word. Often these require PaaS developers and their users to purchase subscriptions to the co-resident SaaS application. [citation needed]
Stand alone development environments
Stand-alone PaaS environments do not include technical, licensing or financial dependencies on specific SaaS applications or web services, and are intended to provide a generalized development environment. [citation needed]
Application delivery-only environments
Delivery-only PaaS offerings do not include development, debugging and test capabilities as part of the service, though they may be supplied offline (via an Eclipse plugin for example[9]). The services provided generally focus on security and on-demand scalability. [citation needed]
Open platform as a service
This type of PaaS does not include hosting as such, rather it provides open source software to allow a PaaS provider to run applications. For example, AppScale allows a user to deploy some applications written for Google App Engine to their own servers, providing datastore access from a standard SQL or NoSQL database. Some open platforms let the developer use any programming language, any database, any operating system, any server, etc. to deploy their applications.[10][11]
Mobile PaaS (mPaaS)
The Yankee Group recently identified mobile PaaS (mPaas) as one of its themes for 2014, naming a number of providers including Kinvey, AnyPresence, FeedHenry, FatFractal and Point.io. [12]

Examples

See also

References

  1. ^ William Y. Chang, Hosame Abu-Amara, Jessica Feng Sanford. Transforming enterprise cloud services. Page 55
  2. ^ "The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing" (PDF). National Institute of Science and Technology. Retrieved 24 July 2011.
  3. ^ Google angles for business users with 'platform as a service'
  4. ^ [1]
  5. ^ S. Garcia-Gomez; et al. (2012). "Challenges for the comprehensive management of Cloud Services in a PaaS framework". Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience. 13 (3). Scientific International Journal for Parallel and Distributed Computing: 201–213. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)
  6. ^ Comparing Amazon’s and Google’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) Offerings | Enterprise Web 2.0 | ZDNet.com
  7. ^ Platform-as-a-Service Architecture for Real-Time Quality of Service Management in Clouds [2]
  8. ^ Chen, Tse-Shih, et al. "Platform-as-a-Service Architecture for Parallel Video Analysis in Clouds." Advances in Intelligent Systems and Applications-Volume 2. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013. 619-626.
  9. ^ Using the Google Plugin for Eclipse
  10. ^ AppScale: Open Source Platform
  11. ^ Interview with inventor of Open Platform as a Service
  12. ^ Yankee 2014 Predictions Mobility hits a tipping point
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