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In the technology arena, the buzzwords and catchphrases come almost as fast as the technical advancements, and one of the latest phrases to join the club is PaaS, or Platform as a Service. Service oriented approaches are becoming more and more popular, and largely for good reason. In general this is positive. People don’t care about the specific things it takes to deliver a particular service or set of services- the care about the outcomes. The problem for many PaaS offerings is they fail to fully deliver on some of the most critical requirements.
In many ways, Software as a Service (SaaS) and Hardware as a Service (HaaS) products are easier to define and fulfill. SaaS, effectively application hosting, is common enough for things like e-mail and web site hosting, and the advent of cloud computing and a hyper-connected user base has made distributed applications more and more feasible and efficient. Google’s document editing and sharing applications are one good example of this.
HaaS takes that same ‘black box’ approach to the role of hardware in an IT deployment, commoditizing computer components and defining them as their deliverables. Hard drives become disk space, memory and processor chips become resource percentages. When you make photocopies at your local office supply store, that’s HaaS in action. The customer pays a small cost for the use of an expensive machine, in this case a photocopier.
Platform as a Service merges SaaS and HaaS approaches, and is intended to function in similar capacities to managed dedicated servers. In theory this is an attractive idea, giving developers low cost, flexible platforms for application development, testing, and deployments. In practice, PaaS offerings often fall short in the most important requirements.
Unlike a pure OS installation, PaaS implements restrictions on modules, plug in access, and other system functions. This is an unavoidable result of having to protect customers from an individual user consuming too many resources or otherwise negatively impacting service. This can hamstring developers, who need full access to APIs, hardware assignments, and other deeper OS calls.
When developers work in a shared hosting environment, they not only have to re-write code to account for system level restrictions, often times they have to make a second pass at changes once they move to a production environment. The added overhead it takes to negate these restrictions can not only bleed away at project revenues, but it can work to the detriment of the application performance and functionality. Having to re-write and find workarounds for PaaS restrictions means that many more opportunities to introduce bugs and other problems.
Managed Dedicated Servers avoid the issue altogether. Developers have full system permissions to do exactly what they need to do without restrictions, which results in tighter coding and better performance. Factor in competitive, budget friendly pricing, and Managed Dedicated Servers become a cost effective, highly attractive option to restrictive shared hosting and PaaS products. A Managed Dedicated server solution can actually boost earnings, while at the same time giving clients a much greater level of service.
Tags: HaaS, Hardware as a Service, managed dedicated server, PaaS, Platform as a Service, SaaS, SaaS application hosting
