How the PaaS market is moving beyond deployment and scaling

Table of Contents

  1. Summary
  2. State of the PaaS market
  3. Backend-as-a-Service and Database-as-a-Service markets
  4. Where the API market is headed: Netflix case study
  5. How could PaaS be specialized and leverage web APIs in a way similar to IaaS?
  6. Key takeaways
  7. David S. Linthicum
  8. About Gigaom Reserach

1. Summary

Platform as a Service (PaaS) is not only about deploying and scaling apps using APIs but also about creating, testing, and debugging those applications, as well as mashing together different web APIs to create new applications for business users. This report will examine the state of the PaaS market today, compare DIY versus PaaS approaches, and then review how the market is evolving.

The PaaS market has been slow to take off, although its counterpart, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), has boomed in recent years. The reasons for this are complicated. The numerous definitions of PaaS and its complexity have meant that many failed to understand its true value. What’s more, the inability to define reusable and repeatable services, or APIs, within PaaS platforms is also limiting the value that this technology can bring.

So, understanding the value of APIs, how do we make them work and play well with the emerging use of PaaS? The problem is that most enterprises don’t understand how APIs and PaaS can work together to build and deploy better enterprise applications more quickly and with much more reuse. This report will clarify for enterprises that:

  • The PaaS market is far behind the SaaS and IaaS markets.
  • The use of API management will add clear value to PaaS providers.
  • BaaS and DBaaS technologies do not provide value in the marketplace because they are too static and limiting.
  • Innovative companies such as Netflix are moving away from static, public API deployments to platforms that provide API-development capabilities.
  • Web APIs are emerging as the best path to provide customized and critical functionality to applications.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Ingram Publishing/Thinkstock.

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