One PaaS, Two PaaS, Red PaaS, Blue PaaS Oftentimes even vendors and experts aren’t sure what platform as a service is. That’s because it can be different things to different users—and that’s much of the appeal.

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PaaS Comes Into Its Own

2015 is—wait for it—the year of platform as a service! Of course, pundits already gave PaaS the keys. But 2015 is when those keys start to work. This is largely because Amazon released AWS Lambda PaaS in January, cement-ing the notion that PaaS will drive growth for infrastructure-as-a-service vendors. Also this year, more new PaaS offerings will be tailored for the Internet of Things, mobile devices and other hot technology areas.

Essentially, a PaaS system provides an inte-grated cloud hardware and software platform and the tools used for software development and delivery. And it breaks the ice for those new to IaaS. Most software architects and developers enter projects via PaaS or a PaaS-like environment and aren’t as familiar with the infrastructure, said Kris Bliesner, founder and CTO of consultancy 2nd Watch, an AWS partner. Overall, Amazon’s potential customers

need both infrastructure and a platform, he said.

Building IoT applications has been diffi-cult in the past because few development tools could facilitate machine-to-machine commu-nication. In 2013, this type of open source tool emerged and got the ball rolling. New cloud platform products embrace IoT, and there’s a laundry list of features that these PaaS IoT options must have to be viable.

IoT presents a strong use case for investing in PaaS, but it’s only one in a crowd. Businesses can use PaaS for many types of application and cloud integration projects, and future uses abound. We kick off this handbook by explor-ing PaaS uses, current and future.

So here’s your passkey to the Year of PaaS. n

Jan StaffordExecutive Editor, SearchCloudApplications

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Where PaaS Stands, and Where It’s Going

Platform as a service, or PaaS, is an estab-lished, effective method for developing and deploying applications in a cloud-based sys-tem. PaaS has also spawned integration PaaS, among other technologies.

PaaS is a cloud computing platform that includes the tools needed to develop, test and deploy applications without the complication of buying and managing the underlying hard-ware and software. Service providers continue to increase flexibility in configuration and life-cycle management while making improvements in PaaS security. However, with the popular-ity of integration platform as a service, is PaaS really necessary?

PaaS and iPaaS appear to be the same thing, except iPaaS includes integration tools to con-nect disparate applications. Both service struc-tures provide development capabilities, a lifecycle management tool, deployment capa-bilities and an operations console to manage

applications and produce use metrics.However, there are differences. Larger enter-

prise companies that have been around for a while and have significant integration needs between newly developed and legacy applica-tions will want iPaaS. PaaS features are more suited for startups, smaller companies or those not hampered by application investments. For these types of businesses, PaaS offers a rapid development method; developers can test applications before investing a large amount of capital in them. It also allows companies to get up and running quickly with DevOps staff but without the need to manage and maintain com-plex hardware and software systems.

PaaS vendors are starting to offer more flex-ibility by adding a run-time engine that’s tai-lored to the client’s cloud infrastructure, while still providing a consistent API to ease applica-tion migration between the environments. The deployment or DevOps portion of PaaS creates

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agility and the ability to quickly get applica-tions into testing, staging, sales and production environments.

PAAS USES

If an organization is under pressure to deliver application software to the Web or mobile devices, PaaS offers distinct advantages. The time to market is faster, which leaves no time for a lengthy, drawn-out release. The product has to be high quality, and it must be provided quickly. PaaS allows companies to focus on the applications they are building and delivering rather than managing and maintaining the full platform system.

PaaS is useful to smaller and startup-type businesses that don’t have an extensive, depen-dent set of legacy applications to migrate. PaaS with multi-tenancy allows maximum sharing of application and data resources, again allow-ing development efforts to remain focused on delivering applications and connecting them rather than building and supporting database resources. The future of PaaS appears secure in the small business and startup space where

applications are built within the cloud and are not reliant on integrated legacy applications.

PAAS SECURITY

The biggest PaaS security issue still appears to be data encryption requirements and their effect on application performance. Data encryption is a necessary step IT teams should take before sending data to a PaaS provider, and that takes time away from application per-formance. There are options to encrypt only confidential data like medical records, ID num-bers and addresses. How much performance an application gains from that, however, depends on the data it’s using.

A second issue is disaster recovery. What happens if a PaaS goes down for any length of time? Are PaaS customers able to continue conducting business? What happens to the messages still in queues or in process? Can they be recovered? These are questions cus-tomers should ask themselves and vendors when considering PaaS. It’s critical that both the application and the data remain secure.

Third, verify the PaaS vendor uses updated

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security protocols. Security is a rapidly chang-ing field, and keeping up with changes and updates is essential. Data breaches and other loss of personally identifiable data carry steep penalties and may result in significant busi-ness loss or failure. Federated security support is desirable for dealing with increasingly com-plex authentication scenarios, including two-factor authentication and single sign-on. The PaaS system is the first line of security defense, but applications need to be designed to handle authentication concepts to protect the business and its customers.

It may seem that iPaaS replaces PaaS, but that’s not yet the case. PaaS systems still pro-vide value by enabling enterprises to build applications that solve business problems quickly and securely without the need to man-age the entire platform system. In the future, iPaaS and PaaS may merge or evolve to include all the options in one system where users can

choose the portions of the service they wish to pay for and configure. Then there would be only one PaaS with feature options for mobile, integration, database and whatever else comes along.

After all, PaaS is a computing platform that includes all the tools needed to create applica-tions and deploy them in the cloud. It’s logi-cal to assume it would include all the possible features in one service. Perhaps that’s what the near future holds—one computing platform service with a diverse menu of features.

—Amy Reichert

PaaS is valuable because it allows enterprises to build apps that solve problems quickly and securely without the need to man age the entire platform.

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PaaS and AWS Are Strangers No More

Don’t get too comfortable in the AWS cloud. Things just might be changing.

Amazon Web Services, pioneer of the cloud-based infrastructure as a service, is starting to offer services that some might say feel—and act—more like a platform as a service.

If you’re confused, you’re not alone. Since AWS arrived on the scene in 2006, the cloud platform has been known as the low-cost and relatively low-frills service for developers. For the early adopters, that strategy made sense, said Microsoft’s James Staten, chief strate-gist in the cloud and enterprise division. But today’s entrants to the cloud market are dif-ferent, with perhaps fewer technical resources or less patience and desire to tinker with the infrastructure. Also, AWS has competition from PaaS-friendly providers such as Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure.

So is AWS just blurring the lines between IaaS and PaaS? Or is it creating a true IaaS and

PaaS hybrid? What are the options for custom-ers looking for more PaaS on AWS?

The answers depend on who is being asked. But opinions aside, the market is changing. In 2013, the combination of IaaS and PaaS accounted for 59% of installed cloud work-loads, according to the Cisco Global Cloud Index. But by 2018, IaaS and PaaS are only going to account for 41% of those workloads with the big loser being IaaS (from 44% to 28%). Clearly, the pressure is on.

In a piece for the now closed GigaOm Research, analyst and consultant David Linthi-cum, senior vice president for Cloud Technol-ogy Partners, said that it’s not even a question that IaaS and PaaS have converged. With PaaS players like Microsoft and Google offering “deep IaaS” services and AWS having new PaaS offerings, “It’s hard to determine where the IaaS stops and the PaaS begins, or the other way around.”

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But whether AWS is really blurring the lines between IaaS and PaaS or just doing a better job of curating services is debatable, Staten said. “One of AWS’ biggest problems is that there are so many services it can be completely over-whelming for a new-to-the-cloud customer to figure out where to go and what to do,” he said. “I see it as AWS offering more curated services and sort of blending PaaS with IaaS, so that depending on the type of customer, they can easily find and use what they need.”

AWS is challenging to use, and “we think Amazon is thinking hard about how to remove the barriers to its infrastructure,” said Kris Bliesner, CEO of consulting company 2nd Watch, an AWS partner. “What customers are finding on the AWS infrastructure side is pretty raw,” he said, and of course that’s one reason companies turn to AWS partners for help. But for those looking for do-it-yourself cloud, “AWS doesn’t have many packaged goods or off-the-shelf options, and that’s where the company is investing right now.”

Bliesner said it’s really all about the cus-tomer. “Amazon has a lot of customers in the middle that need an infrastructure and a

platform, and there is room for both of those. It’s not necessarily encroaching on Amazon’s capabilities to see some blending of the tradi-tional. People are going to start to ask what’s infrastructure and what’s platform.”

AWS is simply not one offering any more, asserted Rich Morrow, founder and cloud architect at quicloud LLC. “AWS is definitely blurring the lines,” he said. And it’s good news for customers. “Right now users have to be more in the weeds than they necessarily would prefer, so Amazon is working hard to reduce the plumbing work.”

But not everyone is ready to look at AWS as a hybrid IaaS and PaaS platform. “The whole PaaS thing is really a moot question,” said Goran Kimovski, principal cloud architect at TriNimbus Technologies Inc., which is in AWS’ partner network. “There are services like

Whether AWS is blurring the lines between IaaS and PaaS or just doing a better job of curating services is debatable.

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relational databases that Amazon offers that are fully managed for you by AWS. But that’s not PaaS; that’s managed services,” he stressed. His reasons? Customers are free to start with the PaaS-like Elastic Beanstalk, for example, but they can grow out of it and go to OpsWorks and then at some point move to CodeWorks. In a traditional PaaS environment, that ability to easily move to a different service doesn’t exist, he said.

Or to put it another way, “Amazon has one cloud offering—Elastic Beanstalk—over in a corner,” said Ernest Mueller, product man-ager at Idera Software and a blogger at the Agile

Admin. “Compared to Google App engine, with its automatic set up, load balancing, stor-age caching and more—it’s just put your code up and use everything. I really don’t think the lines are blurring yet [on AWS].”

Ilja Summala, CTO of Nordcloud, disagreed. The AWS partner has seen customers jump on to AWS but then back off because it is too dif-ficult and too expensive to use. Bringing PaaS functionality is a no-brainer, particularly since AWS is aggressively courting enterprise cus-tomers. “For enterprise customers, this offers the most flexibility and a better cost model,” Summala said. —Valerie Silverthorne

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PaaS Vendors Get Caught Up in the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things promises to con-nect everything to, well, everything else. But for this dream to become a reality, it needs robust cloud platforms that will power the connectivity.

The good news is startups are springing up to supply platform as a service (PaaS) products for the Internet of Things (IoT) market. The less helpful news is this is a market with a lot of “must haves,” warned Adam Lesser, who was an analyst with GigaOm Research, in his report “IoT platforms: An emerging market.” GigaOm closed in March 2015. Lesser said that IoT PaaS providers will need to address a laundry list of features to be successful: hardware form factor, security, scalability, analytics, cost and the abil-ity to offer an end-to-end product. But in this emerging market, many platforms offer only a few of these features.

To better understand what’s available, here’s a look at four relatively new entrants into

the IoT PaaS market. Each offers a different approach to the IoT challenge.

ONE SIZE CAN FIT ALL

Launching new products in the IoT sector doesn’t have to be difficult, according to Rod McLane, senior direct of marketing for Ayla Networks Inc. The company’s secret? No custom code. “We wanted to make it as easy for manufacturers to create devices as pos-sible,” McLane said. So, the company offered its license-free software to a variety of semi-conductor companies. The result is an off-the-shelf chip with an easy-to-connect cloud software stack built in.

Ayla’s one-size-fits-all PaaS was created to run on AWS. Ayla’s CTO was one of the cre-ators of Amazon’s popular Kindle, so it’s not surprising the companies have a close relation-ship. “It’s a good, stable platform, and we have

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all the scalability we need on AWS,” McLane said.

In addition, he said that although Ayla Net-works arrived in the market somewhat later than other players, the timing has been an advantage because the company has been able to use the most cutting-edge technology. As a result, he said, customers have been able to get products to market faster—for example, an appliance manufacturer was able to develop a working prototype in six days using the com-pany’s software embedded chips and PaaS. And Ayla has also been able to use the latest advances in security technology. Every device has a unique security key and takes advantage of a unique VPN role-based security access control to ensure that, for example, someone installing a smart-home appliance will have access when necessary but won’t be able to return later and break in.

START CONNECTING DEVICES FOR FREE

Spain-based Carriots began business by con-necting vending machines. Now, the company has created an easy-to-use PaaS that lets

any developer connect any device to another device and then to the cloud. And it’s free, said CEO Miguel Castillo Holgado. Up to 10 people at a company can use the Carriots PaaS for free; after that, companies pay for the services they use.

The five-step process is simple, Holgado explained. Users start by connecting the desired devices to the cloud platform; then they can use the Carriots RESTful API to push or pull encoded Extensible Markup Language or JavaScript Object Notation data. Using two-way communication protocols, a developer can create rules for the device; then the entire pro-cess can be scaled up to millions of devices.

Carriots runs on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform for developers wanting a public cloud, but Holgado said the PaaS is also available for licensing in a private cloud.

Ayla Net works arrived in the market later than other players, allowing the company to use the most cutting-edge technology.

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“We have really tried to be flexible,” Hol-gado said. “We want to give customers freedom and flexibility on the way our platform con-nects and the way it supports machine learn-ing.” He said Carriots differs from many other IoT PaaS offerings because it’s easy to build a custom front end on top of the Carriots plat-form, giving users exactly the experience they want, along with the power of the underlying technology.

That’s particularly important today, Holgado added, because “there are a lot of flavors of IoT.” The company has had a lot of success introduc-ing technology into sectors that he described as “not very technology aware,” including every-thing from beer brewers to companies manu-facturing coffee makers.

A JUMP START TO THE CLOUD

At Xively by LogMeIn, it’s all about the con-nections. The company saw a gap in the market for a PaaS that would quickly connect custom-ers, products and manufacturers together and to one another, and with sufficient security, said Sean Lorenz, senior product marketing

manager at Xively.“The challenge is determining all the points

and systems where access to data is needed,” Lorenz said, adding that, of course, people need access, too. Using the example of a smart

garage door, the installer needs access, but only for a limited amount of time for secu-rity purposes. And then there are all the manu-facturer’s systems that need access: customer relationship management, ERP and Salesforce, just to name a few. In addition, there’s the chal-lenge of identification access management.

In other words, Lorenz said, it’s complicated. So the Xively PaaS is aimed at making it easier for companies to create all the connections on the Xively developer workbench and then track all the moving parts using the management console.

The next step, though, will be tying in

It’s easy to build a custom front end on top of the Carriots plat form, giving users exactly the experience they want.

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analytics. “Companies are going to need report-ing analysis and anomaly detection,” Lorenz said. “That’s a valuable next iteration.”

MAKING SENSE OF THE DATA

Germany-based Axiros is new to the IoT mar-ket but not at all a startup, said chief strat-egy officer Alfeo Pareschi. And because the company has been in the telecommunications industry for 12 years, it has a track record of connection and communication.

The company’s Axperience platform was

created to allow customers to connect any device to any service using any protocol at any time, Pareschi explained. Axperience was designed for remote support, data collection and analytics as well as automatic service acti-vation. Using portable embedded software and dynamic Web APIs, the platform is targeted at governments, enterprises, utilities and tele-communications companies looking to man-age and monitor IoT devices. “We’re offering a solution that lets large companies stay in con-trol of their IoT efforts,” Pareschi said.

—Valerie Silverthorne

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ABOUT THE

AUTHORS

AMY REICHERT is a software tester with 16 years of experience. She has written about quality assurance, ERP systems, architectural design, e-commerce, Agile and a range of software development practices. Email

her at rabowreich@gmail.com.

VALERIE SILVERTHORNE is a writer and editor with nearly 30 years of experience covering business, trade, technology, real estate and lifestyle trends. She works as a freelance writer and is a frequent contributor for TechTarget sites. Email her at valerierice@gmail.com.

One PaaS, Two PaaS, Red PaaS, Blue PaaS is an e-publication of SearchCloudApplications.com.

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