within the service delivery layers in the cloud, we have the Platform as a Service (PaaS) and the Software as a Service (SaaS)among others.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a model that enables developers and operational professionals to build software on top of provided platforms. PaaS gives you a variety of ways to develop, customize, manage, and support your software and applications.
However, Platform as a Service is the most difficult cloud service delivery layer to understand. It acts like a hybrid of SaaS and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service).
In the PaaS model, developers don’t have to provision infrastructure, but instead get an environment where they can flexibly develop and scale their applications. Also, it provides developers with many development, testing, and deployment tools, and allows them to collaborate on developing software. Due to virtualization, high scalability is guaranteed.
Platform as a Service should provide a developer with everything they need to build and deploy an application without having to make any provision for the underlying infrastructure.
PaaS providers tend to be the largest technology companies, which can offer a wide range of capabilities for their customers on one platform. Examples include Google App Engine, Oracle Cloud Platform, Pivotal’s Cloud Foundry, and Salesforce-owned Heroku, CIO Spain claims.
The underlying infrastructure for different PaaS offerings varies, so Oracle and AWS would prefer to have it run on their own infrastructure, and others are more agnostic. For example, SAP Cloud Platform can run on top of AWS, Azure, or GCP Cloud Infrastructure. Red Hat’s OpenShift is similarly cloud vendor agnostic.
SaaS, on the other hand, is a model for providing services in the cloud in which a third-party provider hosts a portion of the software and the customer can easily access it through the web.
In the SaaS model, the customer’s web browser acts as the access point to software and applications running on third-party servers (ie infrastructure). The software is implemented, managed, updated and supported by a third party as well, according to Teamnet.
SaaS software is packaged; it is not very customizable and looks the same for all clients. Getting started with such a solution usually requires a login and subscription.
Similarities and differences
The common link between Paas and SaaS is the type of service they offer. Both are Online services, whose operation occurs through the cloud. In addition, they offer the possibility of paying only according to the resources to be consumed and the use to be given to them. They are also scalable systems, so that capacity can be increased whenever and wherever necessary.
The main difference between SaaS and PaaS has to do with the maintenance and support offered by the provider. While in SaaS, users don’t even have access to the software, in PaaS they can manage the platform, but not the server.
Therefore, depending on the specific needs and preferences of each company, they should opt for one cloud computing service or another.
Finally, from the point of view of the end user, it must be taken into account that SaaS solutions can be ideal for freelancers and SMEs, since they require little computer knowledge. Paas services, on the other hand, are highly oriented towards developers who aspire to create custom applications, which is why they require superior technical knowledge.
