In the past, businesses started by building and developing their own apps. This demanded server space, software to create programming environments and security to keep everything safe on the premises. That often meant complex software stacks, frequent updates, hardware maintenance and investing a lot of money in an on-premise environment to help them build apps become out-dated very quickly. All in all, an expensive solution in terms of both time and money.
Development tools evolve fast and suddenly you're using yesterday’s interface and yesterday’s technology. Businesses started looking for solutions to help speed up the process and make it cheaper and easier to create the apps they needed. The first to seek more efficient options were businesses already outsourcing other areas of computing services – such as cloud-based software services for recruitment, marketing, or travel and expense management. They looked for an external answer to their internal problem.
PaaS helps developers and business users focus on build great apps with clicks & code without having to worry about infrastructure and operating systems. Development tools, servers and programming environments are readily accessible, via the cloud, without the complexity and expense of creating them in-house. Apps can be developed and hosted faster and with very low setup costs, without the risk of delays or inefficiencies caused by infrastructure issues. Put simply, PaaS allows developers to concentrate on what they do best, so they can produce high-quality results, faster.
PaaS is part of a family of cloud computing tools which includes Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Everything as a Service (XaaS). The cloud computing model allows organisations to outsource computing services so they can dedicate more energy to their core business.