A noticeable trend lately in enterprise technology is in the Platform-as-a-Service arena. PaaS is the middle layer of the cloud, above infrastructure and below applications, including software (SaaS). Middle layer technologies, or “middleware”, include 10 different categories including application servers, databases, portals, messaging, business process management (BPM), and middleware technologies. Over time, many of these solutions have transformed from on-premises into the cloud, evidenced by the shift in Microservices and application programming interfaces (APIs).
As technology stacks evolve, you may have also noticed the emergence of aPaaS, otherwise known as application platform-as-a-service. Such services primarily offer application development and deployment, in contrast to PaaS only solutions, which only focus on middleware. Some advantages of aPaaS solutions include:
- Building Applications Easily – Developers have access to all the necessary tools needed to iterate upon their projects. Some platforms have intuitive drag and drop features, which make development easy.
- Accelerated Deployment – aPaaS platforms reduce deployment time, capable of integrating new application features from an older system. Developers make changes without friction.
- Application Scalability – aPaaS platforms offer horizontal and vertical scalability, providing the opportunity to upgrade and add databases hassle-free.
- Application Integration – Developers enjoy integration with other applications including database, operating system, and vulnerability management, backed by robust security.
Undoubtedly, this marks an exciting time in the software development industry and we expect a greater explicit differentiation between the two areas in the following quarters. As low-code solutions also gain in popularity and market movement accelerates, you should expect to see more mentions of aPaaS as well.
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Perficient has over two decades of experience assisting global organizations in their technology transitions. Learn more about our work at www.perficient.com and speak to one of our specialists today.
