Platform as a service (PaaS) is defined as a cloud computing platform where a third party offers the necessary software and hardware resources.
These offerings enable clients to develop, run, and manage business applications without maintaining the infrastructure required for such software development processes.
In this article, we will be giving some PaaS examples in real life as well as how they carry out their work and their relevance.
14 PaaS Examples In Real Life
The cloud services offered by today’s leading PaaS providers are equipped to operate across languages, libraries, containers, and equivalent tools. These include computing, storage, databases, developer and management tools, and security.
Some of PaaS examples in real life include:
1. Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It offers management, access and development of applications and services to individuals, companies, and governments through its global infrastructure.
Microsoft Azure is perhaps one of the most approved PaaS examples that you will come across. This is most likely because it is used widely across the world. It is so expansive that it includes all three basic cloud models. Furthermore, it can support every step in the app development process, from the first piece of code to the final deployment of the code.
It supports many programming languages, tools, and frameworks, including Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems.
Microsoft Azure allows an individual the ability to code in ASP.NET, PHP, or Node.js. It helps firms develop the simplest capability to easily migrate all their apps and infrastructure. It includes mobile services as well as advanced applications in business analytics.
2. Heroku
Heroku is a platform as a service (PaaS) that enables developers to build, run, and operate applications entirely in the cloud. It is not as much an enterprise platform as a service solution as it is a self-contained system that is centered around apps.
It also has space for data integration. It is also mostly made up of ecosystems accessible entirely within the platform. It is known for its intuitive and user-friendly UI. Its ease of use has made it a favorite among production developers and those developing apps just for fun.
The Developer Experience Module included in Heroku allows one to deploy directly from popular repositories such as GitHub and Git and contains a dashboard that allows you to add apps and utilities to your solution easily. It is regularly updated and patched and is compatible with a wide host of languages.
3. AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda is a part of the AWS Cloud and is another PaaS example in real life. It is completely integrated with all the different AWS services and has a server-less architecture. If you want to build custom backend services that can be triggered on demand through the use of custom API endpoints, then this is a wonderful option for you.
It is widely integrated with nearly every third-party library and language. The platform’s administration is completely automated, allowing users to focus only on the services they intend to provide. The platform is highly fault-tolerant and developed to protect the user’s code against machine language errors, allowing it to run smoothly and without a hitch. AWS Lambda can automatically scale to the level of incoming support requests.
4. Google App Engine
Google App Engine is among the many PaaS examples that are part of a whole suite of services. It is a part of the Google Cloud and offers highly scalable apps and tools that can be used as a part of your service. It is compatible with many languages, even though some key options seem to have been missed.
It has a standard environment, which makes it easy to build and deploy an application that runs reliably even under heavy loads and with large amounts of data. It is serverless and available continuously without any downtime.
5. Dokku
Dokku is the smallest PaaS platform that has ever been created. It is an extensible, open source platform as a service that runs on a single server of your choice.
Due to its small size, the features it offers to developers are limited. However, its high user base may be attributed to its being completely free and open source. It helps an individual build and manage the lifecycle of applications, from building to scaling.
It is built on a container-based Docker platform. It offers wide integration, even though scalability is expectedly limited. It offers multiple methods of deployment and guides you through every step of the deployment process. It also helps you with configuration and network management.
6. Apprenda Cloud Platform
Apprenda Cloud Platform is one of those enterprise PaaS examples that borrows from open-source solutions to improve their robustness. The unique selling point of Apprenda Cloud Platform is its ability to transition services from traditional applications running on dot-net to a PaaS environment.
It allows you to rapidly deploy and run applications built on Java as well as dot net. The developer and the IT operations in the platform are completely automated, and control is placed in the hands of the programmers. Programmers also get the capability to define the security policy of their applications. It allows you to run multiple clouds, whether private or public.
7. Pivotal Cloud Foundry
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is an example of PaaS managed by the Cloud Foundry Foundation. It is a distribution of the open-source Cloud Foundry platform. It is a powerful framework for the fast development and deployment of applications.
The workflows of Cloud Foundry are highly streamlined, and the framework itself is very scalable. It allows for portability and automatic scaling of applications. In addition, it also contains tools for application health management and infrastructure security.
8. Salesforce Lightning
Salesforce has always been highly preferred among platforms as a service, but Salesforce Lightning is considered the next generation of the PaaS platform. It offers a host of new features and great updates to old ones. It offers a much-improved user interface that is dashboard based and easy to use.
It contains interactive tabs as well as an activity timeline that make the task of rapid application development and deployment much easier for both the frontend users and the backend IT side. Salesforce lightning’s homepage is a great example of simplicity, even in the most complex of applications.
The most loved feature of Salesforce Lightning has been the virtual assistant, which isn’t just very helpful but also seems capable of getting you exactly what you want.
9. IBM Cloud Foundry
IBM Cloud Foundry is an open-source PaaS example that is still extremely powerful. While it can’t be called nearly as capable as its other counterparts developed by IT majors, it does offer some really useful features and, over the years, has been scaling up to get into the big leagues. IBM Cloud Foundry supports various languages, from Java to PHP and Python to Ruby.
In addition, their build packs are regularly updated on the IBM Cloud Foundry Community. It is also highly fault-tolerant and allows your application to run smoothly and without hotches caused by code errors.
IBM Cloud Foundry is an open-source version of IBM’s PaaS, which is powerful as well as agile. Cloud Foundry allows coordinated linkage of coding parameters (related to building and deployment) to associated cloud services. As a consequence, applications are deployed quickly and consistently.
10. Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift is supposed to provide users with a significantly easier platform to create and deploy applications. It is compatible with a wide range of APIs, ensuring that the user is never restricted just to what is included in the platform.
There are various features that Red Hat OpenShift has to offer to its users. It is based on Kubernetes, and all its elements are made available on the cloud. It contains a simple user interface, and perhaps its greatest feature is its security options to stave off intrusion and prevent unauthorised access internally.
Red Hat’s OpenShift offers users a seamless way to build and deploy applications. It also provides extensive API support, thereby extending its capability beyond the platform itself. It is also known to be an incredibly secure platform.
11. Oracle Cloud Platform
The Oracle Cloud Platform is yet another among the PaaS examples in cloud computing used primarily at the enterprise level. Oracle is an industry that has high expertise in all aspects of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Platform allows you to run Oracle as well as non-Oracle applications smoothly on its servers. It is highly secure and offers great flexibility with APIs.
It is also great at providing analytical tools on the cloud, which can improve the applications you have built. You can also choose the method you want to use for greater flexibility in the deployment process.
PaaS service is one of the leading products among those offered by the company. The platform was initially designed to work with Oracle SaaS applications, but it also works with other apps.
12. Zoho Creator
Zoho Creator is perhaps the simplest to use among the PaaS examples you will find here.
It is not a very complex platform, nor does it have any highly sophisticated tools or utilities, but its ease of use makes it a considerably popular choice among beginners and learners.
It is as easy as dragging and dropping tools in a dashboard and is centered around making application development a visual process rather than one based on code. It also contains quite a few useful automation options.
13. Wasabi
Wasabi is a platform-as-a service example meant for individual use or for small to medium-sized businesses.
Wasabi is easy to set up and has a clean user interface, making application development a task that takes much less time than usual.
It is among the platform service providers that are not yet enterprise-scale yet contain many highly scalable utilities and features.
14. Cloudways
Cloudways is among the platform-as-a service providers that use web hosting as a strategy. While it contains useful tools for rapid application development and deployment, it has also been widely used to create virtual web servers. This is probably due to the feature of managed web hosting, which makes the task much simpler. It is not open source but is pretty transparent about its features, pricing, and code compatibility.
Conclusion
PaaS technology was first introduced by Salesforce.com, Heroku and Amazon Web Services (AWS) back in 2007. After this , Google launched App Engine in 2008, which was a free trial version. Overnight, these initiatives transformed the online cloud computing space into a complete virtual industry. It was offered as a complete solution for an enterprise-customized Research and Development (R&D) middleware platform. Now PaaS technology has evolved and not only offers application software but also covers both application and database services.
PaaS cloud technology has changed the development, testing and deployment processes of service-oriented architecture (SOA). It has also provided ease in the application development process for the whole SOA architecture.
PaaS platform usage will grow in the coming years as more citizen developers use them to create applications.