Platform As a Service (PaaS)

Platform as a service (PaaS) is a category of cloud computing services that provides a computing platform and a solution stack as a service. In this model, the consumer creates an application or service using libraries or/and tools from the provider. The consumer also controls configuration settings and software deployment. The provider provides the servers, networks, storage, and other services that are required to host the customer's application.

Platform Aa a Service offerings facilitate the deployment of services and/or applications without the cost and complexity of managing and buying the underlying software, hardware and provisioning hosting capabilities. All "as-a-service" offerings are characterized as providing low initial cost, self-service, incremental cost as your service usage grows, best practices built-in, resource sharing, management services, automated deployment, lifecycle management, reuse. PaaS provides these capabilities for application and service development.

Figure - Platform As a Service. Source - http://goo.gl/97hmwq

There are various types of PaaS service providers; however, all offer deployment environment and application hosting, along with various integrated services. Services offer varying levels of scalability and maintenance.

PaaS offerings might also include facilities for application development, application design, testing, and deployment as well as services such as web service integration, team collaboration, and marshalling, database integration, scalability, storage, security, persistence, application versioning, application instrumentation, state management, and developer community facilitation.

Besides the service engineering aspects, PaaS offerings cover mechanisms for service management, such as monitoring, discover, workflow management, reservation etc.

Example:

Figure 2 - SaaS, PaaS and IaaS Example. Source - http://goo.gl/FJliOe

Reference: Software company India