What is Platform-as-a-Service?

If you’re not sure how to define Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), you’re not alone. But the technology is well worth understanding, because it’s radically changing software development.

Developers have traditionally leveraged on-site infrastructure components (servers, storage, networking) to design and deploy applications. PaaS recreates this infrastructure in the cloud, allowing developers to engineer both simple and highly complex applications on a pay-as-you-go basis. PaaS providers also offer resources like development tools, libraries and database management systems, so developers using PaaS don’t have to worry about infrastructure logistics at all.

To widen the lens a bit, PaaS is one of three pillars of cloud computing services, along with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). After SaaS, PaaS is the most popular cloud computing type. A recent survey of cloud adoption in the healthcare industry found that 83% of IT organizations use cloud services, and while 70% of them use SaaS, a healthy percentage also use PaaS.

How Can Rackspace Help?

Rackspace fully supports the leading cloud platforms — AWS^®, Microsoft^® Azure^® and OpenStack^® Cloud — so you can focus your efforts on app development and deployment, not troubleshooting architecture, security or optimization. We’ll take care of these time-consuming, technically challenging issues.

Amazon Web Services

Our AWS management experts will help you migrate your app portfolio to AWS, design and deploy an AWS infrastructure that fits your business needs, and handle operational requirements. Our architects and engineers have [aws:aws_cert_number] AWS technical certifications.

Microsoft Azure

Our Azure management experts, including thousands of Microsoft-certified professionals, will handle the complexity of Microsoft Azure so you don’t have to. We’ll architect your Azure infrastructure, optimize it for stellar performance, and provide ongoing management and support.

OpenStack Public Cloud

Powered by OpenStack, Rackspace Public Cloud gives you full control of your environment, without vendor lock-in. Rackspace Public Cloud isn’t just easy to manage via our single control panel — it also provides all the cloud technologies your business needs to develop and deploy apps.