PaaS Offers Both Choice and Reward

PaaS makes it possible to support both experienced and junior level application developers.

Organizations usually have multiple types of developers—and you need to support them all. That can be challenging, especially with all the other things you need to do at the same time, such as dealing with commoditization, mobility and a user-first focus to ensure successful data integration.

Fortunately, Platform as a Service (PaaS) makes it possible to support both kinds of developers while also tackling your other “must do” tasks. PaaS can provide your more experienced programmers with a control platform they need to help them more easily manage code-based application development. It can also empowers those technical business users (including 4GL or GUI-type developers) who have identified a critical need for a specific application and need a productivity platform to get it out the door quickly.

Cloud based “as-a-service” innovations have made it possible—indeed, even best practice—to achieve support for both of these development patterns. Cloud based development platform services share the following characteristics:

• PaaS is an enabler. In the past, it was too difficult to support both development approaches. Now that these options are available in the cloud, it is feasible for organizations to leverage both.
• Business does not have to rip and replace to benefit from new technologies. Service-based approaches that leverage an API abstraction layer make it easier for applications developed with different technologies to coexist seamlessly.
• Standards-based data integration is a reality. Data integration capabilities now exist within the PaaS environment that makes it easy to integrate data that sits behind the apps.
• Cloud solutions are user-friendly. PaaS solutions that provide support for both approaches allow you to integrate efforts between your citizen developers and your traditional coders easily.

It is now possible to create a single enterprise application or family of applications that leverage the best of both worlds.

Drilling into PaaS choices

If your organization does have a need to support both of these development patterns, you should consider a best-in-class PaaS provider that offers both control and productivity platforms. That choice offers a unitary resource that supports as much diversity as you need or want. There is a wide range of technologies that fit into the PaaS category.

Some PaaS offerings are focused on deploying, scaling and managing completed applications. Others technologies like aPaaS are more focused on the development stage of the application lifecycle.

Gartner breaks the aPaaS space into high productivity and high control solutions. It is entirely possible that your PaaS strategy will include support for both, but you need to make sure to drive this decision based on your organization requirements.

Discover How PaaS Can Transform Your Organization

For more about PaaS, download my latest whitepaper, “9 Essentials to Create Amazing Applications Faster.”