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- What are the Top PaaS Providers of 2024?
Want to find out what are the top PaaS providers? You are at the right place, as, in this article, we will compare the top PaaS service providers available today.
This platform comparison takes into account several factors, for example, the overall cloud capabilities of PaaS vendors, user-friendliness of the platform, flexibility, robustness, documentation, workflow tools, etc. Let’s start.
Top PaaS Providers
Some of the top PaaS providers include the following:
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Elastic Beanstalk is certainly one of the top PaaS providers. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone since AWS has one of the best cloud capabilities in the market. Read “Top cloud computing vendors” to know more about the pole position AWS has earned.
You can use AWS Elastic Beanstalk to deploy and run web apps developed using a variety of programming languages. Java, .Net, PHP, Ruby, Node.js, and Python are just some examples.
Upload your code using easy-to-use tools, and AWS Elastic Beanstalk handles everything else. That includes deployment, provisioning, load-balancing, and auto-scaling.
The excellent deep integration with the AWS cloud environment offers you many more advantages. Take, for example, your database. You will only need to consume an AWS cloud database service. It’s really easy to integrate a database with your web app, read more in “Adding a database to your Elastic Beanstalk environment”.
Another great example is how easily you can use their DevOps services. Once again, it’s just as simple as consuming a service, and the AWS DevOps toolset is ready to automate your testing, build management, and deployment. Read about it in “Set up a continuous deployment pipeline”.
There is no separate charge for AWS Elastic Beanstalk, therefore, you can use your AWS account. AWS provides excellent documentation. Their tutorials are very comprehensive, for e.g., if you need to learn how to integrate 3rd party ‘Application Programming Interfaces’ (APIs), their tutorials will be very helpful.
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Oracle Cloud Platform (OCP)
A key player in the software development landscape even before the advent of cloud computing, Oracle is also a significant player in the PaaS market. Oracle Cloud Platform (OCP) combines both open-source and Oracle proprietary technologies.
You can develop apps, manage builds, deploy, run, and manage operations easily on OCP. The platform has important self-repairing capabilities, built with machine learning and AI. High-quality data encryption, the ability to integrate all your applications seamlessly, and a one-stop shop to manage your entire application portfolio make OCP a robust PaaS.
Programmers using this platform can use the Oracle autonomous transaction processing database and the Oracle autonomous data warehouse. Oracle claims to offer a very large portfolio of services from a wide range of cloud vendors through their PaaS. In addition to a trial period, Oracle offers ‘Pay as you go’ and ‘Monthly flex’ pricing plans.
Google App Engine
Google App Engine is Google’s PaaS. Its functionality is integrated with the Google Cloud Platform, which uses the same infrastructure as the Google search engine. That should put to rest all your apprehensions about the robustness of the underlying infrastructure while using PaaS software.
Read more on Google Cloud Platform here.
With Google App Engine, you develop, deploy, and manage your applications on a fully managed cloud platform. Programmers needn’t worry about infrastructure provisioning or configuration, moreover, they can also let Google App Engine handle the scaling. Developers can focus on what they love the most, i.e., coding.
The platform supports all popular languages like Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, Node.js, .Net, etc. Google’s PaaS offers high-quality security solutions including firewall capabilities, Identity and Access Management (IAM), and fully-managed SSL/TLS certificates.
Google Cloud SDK, cloud deployment manager, and Visual Studio as IDE are just some of the Google cloud developer tools you can use. There is a comprehensive suite of documentation. You can pay based on the computing resources you consume.
Microsoft Azure
Some cloud providers offer their IaaS and PaaS components together, where customers can make a choice suited to their requirements. Microsoft Azure follows this approach. Their PaaS is offered on the same robust infrastructure as the Azure IaaS and SaaS offerings.
Microsoft Azure has highly reputed cloud capabilities, as several reports confirm. Read “Top cloud providers: how AWS, Microsoft, Google, IBM, Oracle, Alibaba stack up” if you need confirmation.
Their PaaS offering includes all the standard features, e.g., infrastructure, data center servers, cloud storage, networking, security solutions, middleware, OS, databases, runtime environments, analytics, and development tools.
A free trial period, ‘pay as you go’, a price estimation tool, and detailed pricing of all services on their website make it easy for one to make decisions. There is excellent documentation available for this fully-managed cloud PaaS.
Salesforce aPaaS
Salesforce application Platform as a Service (aPaaS) continues to enjoy a high reputation, and market-watchers reaffirm their positive views about it.
Salesforce aPaaS offers all standard PaaS features. This includes infrastructure, servers, storage, networking, security, middleware, OS, runtime environments, development tools, databases, and an ability to easily integrate 3rd party APIs.
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Salesforce aPaaS uses Heroku for deploying, running, and managing apps. Their ‘Lightning Design’ system offers guides and sample codes for developers, who can then get started with the app development quickly.
Salesforce acknowledges that programmers may have a learning curve to get started with their PaaS. It’s noticeable that developers continue to rate the platform highly despite the perceived learning curve. There is a free trial, moreover, a wide range of pricing options are available.
Red Hat OpenShift PaaS
Red Hat OpenShift PaaS takes the advantage of the reliability and security that Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers. It combines that with the OpenStack IaaS.
On top of that, you can build your apps with the Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP). This should allow you to focus on your code without the unnecessary diversion of infrastructure and runtime environment-related concerns!
This platform offers an open and extensible architecture. Scaling, efficiency, and security are in safe hands!
Developers can choose their preferred languages, and OpenShift PaaS will offer a suitable runtime environment. Programmers can expedite their app development with services like databases, frameworks, and an ability to swiftly integrate 3rd party APIs.
Mendix aPaaS
Mendix ‘application Platform as a Service’ (aPaaS) offers a wide range of application development services. It’s a cloud app development platform with a comprehensive suite of integrated tools. The platform allows the visual modeling of applications.
Developers can create data models, moreover, they can model their UI and business logic.
The platform aids in ‘Agile’ development, with tools especially suited to collaborative development. Their tools work well in a team environment, furthermore, developers can build in feedback management.
Mendix aPaaS allows integration with a host of 3rd party APIs covering IoT, machine learning, cognitive services, and analytics. Like other reputed PaaS providers, they provide comprehensive documentation that aids this integration.
The platform also includes a comprehensive suite of DevOps tools, covering deployment, backup, monitoring, alerts, and log management. Cloud Foundry and Docker (container)/Kubernetes deployment are other factors that help developers.
IBM Cloud Platform
IBM’s PaaS offering was known as ‘IBM Bluemix’ earlier, however, IBM now offers it as the overall IBM Cloud Platform. This is a combination of IBM’s IaaS and PaaS.
IBM continues to enjoy a high reputation as a managed cloud service provider, as you can see in “The Top 5 Cloud-Computing Vendors: #1 Microsoft, #2 Amazon, #3 IBM, #4 Salesforce, #5 SAP”.
IBM Cloud Platform offers you a range of choices for running your app, e.g.:
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- As a Cloud Foundry app;
- As a Docker container on a Kubernetes cluster;
- As VMware;
- As a virtual machine.
This platform offers all the standard features of a PaaS, however, a key differentiator is its wide array of services. At the time of writing this, IBM Cloud Platform offers over 190 services in its services catalog. IBM also makes it easy to connect your app to other services, e.g., IBM Watson services.
SAP Cloud Platform
Like Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM, another leader from the traditional IT landscape is also increasingly bullish on cloud computing, and that’s SAP. Their SAP Cloud Platform is an open PaaS.
In addition to offering all standard PaaS features, SAP PaaS also offers microservices. This helps in building mobile-enabled cloud applications.
The platform offers a wide range of services like analytics, machine learning, orchestration, integration with 3rd party APIs, IoT, DevOps, etc. An added advantage is easy API integration with SAP proprietary modules like SAP HANA, SuccessFactors, etc.
Engine Yard:
Engine Yard Cloud PaaS uses AWS as IaaS. They have a decade worth of experience in providing a managed PaaS, however, they focus only on ‘Ruby on Rails’. Except for this limitation in language support, Engine Yard is highly experienced.
They also provide the entire gamut of PaaS features, e.g., networking, infrastructure, collaboration tools, environment control, security, automated deployment, scalability, databases, microservices, and containers. Check their pricing plans.
Planning to Invest in PaaS Infrastructure?
Cloud computing in all its forms is getting popular among a range of businesses. The benefits of having increased flexibility, availability of on-demand resources, options to use the latest technology frameworks, etc. are compelling business owners to opt for cloud services instead of on-premises ones.
However, choosing a PaaS provider that is best suitable to your business needs is important. You will have to consider the supported technology, frameworks, etc. to integrate your business operations seamlessly into a cloud platform.
If you as a business CEO or CTO, are planning to invest in a PaaS provider platform for your business processes, we would advise you to partner with a reputed software development company with experience in PaaS cloud development and deployment.
DevTeam.Space can also help you here with its field-expert software development community. Write to us your initial PaaS cloud computing services requirements via this form and one of our technical managers will reach out to you to discuss further details regarding team building, project specifications, etc.
Frequently Asked Questions on PaaS Providers
PaaS stands for ‘Platform as a Service’. PaaS solutions provide a cloud computing platform for users to develop, run, and manage applications on the cloud.
While PaaS (Platform as a Service) allows users to develop and run applications on the cloud, it leaves much of the application and data management to the creator. SaaS (Software as a Service differs from PaaS in that it allows companies to build apps and use them while the company retains full control over the application’s function, development, data storage, etc.
The most obvious example of a cloud provider for PaaS services is Amazon’s AWS. However, there are many more great cloud computing service platforms for a PaaS solution that you can learn about by reading this DevTeam.Space article.
