The vast majority of Web applications will eventually run on platform-as-a-service, or PaaS. The shift will be slower than to infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) because finding the perfect PaaS fit will take effort, and there’s significant loss of control over hardware and software. Many IT departments will resist. But it will happen, so to help you evaluate options and plan a migration strategy, we sent out a questionaire with more than 70 factors to consider to major PaaS providers. You can download a full set of responses at our InformationWeek PaaS comparison site.
The PaaS value proposition is simple: Bring your code, and we’ll handle everything else for you — Internet connectivity, power, hardware, operating system, software, monitoring, backup, restore, failover, scaling and more. IT can focus on writing code to solve business problems and leave the mechanics of infrastructure and operations to the vendor. In theory, you get a best-practices deployment, including security and business continuity, at a lower cost and better quality versus having your own staff do the work.
We say, “in theory” because these are still early days, and vendors provide so many different services — with so many moving parts — that it will take time to demonstrate stability to CIOs. However, we’re convinced that PaaS is the future, and that companies that fail to consider it will be at a disadvantage.