• General Purpose 

General Purpose PaaS should provide the tools required to completely automate the process of acquiring virtual infrastructure for a given application.

• PaaS -> Platform as a Service

Platform as a Service (PaaS) is an abstracted and integrated cloud-based computing environment that supports the development, running, and management of applications. Application components may exist in a cloud environment or may integrate with applications managed in private clouds or in data centers.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is at the foundational level and includes capabilities such as operating systems, networks, virtual machines, and storage.In the middle is the Platform as a service (PaaS) environment, which includes services for developing and deploying applications.

Software as a Service (SaaS) is at the top of the pyramid representing the actual applications offered to end users.

PaaS – Platform as a Service

PaaS vendors create a managed environment that brings together a combination of components that would have been managed separately in a traditional development environment. Services integrated in PaaS include middleware, operating systems, and development and deployment services to support software development and delivery organizations.in simple description With PaaS vendors still manage runtime, middleware, O/S, virtualization, servers, storage, and networking, but users manage applications and data.

Most PaaS platforms are associated with software development, and they provide developers several advantages. (Windows Azure PaaS is one of them. It delivers a robust platform, allowing users to test, build, and deploy applications with ease, so that the enterprises can focus on the application, rather than managing complex computing resources.)

The goal of the PaaS provider is to create an abstracted environment that supports an efficient, cost-effective, and repeatable process for the creation and deployment of high-quality applications. These applications are designed to be implemented in public or private cloud environments.

PaaS Responsibility

• Generations of PaaS

In order to improve PaaS technology, it is going through many transformations phases since it has been launched in the market. Currently, PaaS evolved to a great extent that business and developer start relying and adopting it. has named this technology transformations in PaaS architecture as “PaaS generations”.

Generation 01: This generation was based on classical fixed proprietary cloud platforms. AWS, Heroku and Azure were initial technology platforms who initiated such services.

Generation 02: This generation platforms were developed around open source solutions. OpenShift and Cloud Foundry were emerged as one of the top players of this generation. These technology providers offered clients to run their own PaaS (in the cloud or on-premise).

Aforementioned, PaaS platforms also initiated the idea of containers and developed their own container models. However, currently these PaaS vendors are transforming their approach and moving toward improved technology models. For example: presently Openshift transferred from its own container model to the Docker based container model. The same transformation performed by Cloud Foundry, through its internal Diego solution.

 Generation 03: Currently, third generation of PaaS is purely focused on container models. The new PaaS platforms like Deis, Dawn, Octohost, Flynn and Tsuru are purely built on Docker based container models. These platforms build around Docker from scratch. Moreover, these PaaS models are deployable on public IaaS clouds or on their own servers.

❖    PaaS Delivery

The delivery model of PaaS is similar to SaaS, except instead of delivering the software over the internet, PaaS provides a platform for software creation. This platform is delivered over the web, and gives developers the freedom to concentrate on building the software while still not having to worry about operating systems, software updates, storage or infrastructure.

PaaS allows businesses to design and create applications that are built into the PaaS with special software components. These applications or middleware are scalable and highly available as they take on certain cloud characteristics.

• Benefits of PaaS

One of the major benefits of platform as a service PaaS is its ability to improve a developer’s productivity. PaaS provides direct support for business agility by enabling rapid development with faster and more frequent delivery of functionality. It does this through continuous integration techniques and automatic application deployment. PaaS also enables developers to realize the cloud’s broader benefits.

PaaS – Platform as a Service

1. Pay as you go method

Users only pay for the services procured, so there is not any wastage of resources. Pay-as-you-go method permits you to be charged only for what you use. Some PaaS providers charge monthly fee to access their platform and the apps. It is important to discuss pricing before engaging their services.

2. Speed, Flexibility and Agility

PaaS provides better flexibility, speed, and agility to the development process. By providing a predictable application infrastructure, enterprises don’t get bogged down with enabling applications and can meet the customers’ needs.

3. Scalability and Performance

Cloud can be scaled to meet your growing IT system requirements.

Regarding performance, it is the PaaS provider’s responsibility to ensure that customers’ services run without any hurdle and also to provide them with the ability to access their resources via dashboards for better performance.

4. No backup overheads

Storage spaces and backups require costs for maintenance, power and cooling which all drain a company’s budget. These are not required with PaaS solutions as PaaS eliminates the need for backup and storage. It will ultimately result in substantial savings.

5. High Network bandwidth

It’s very important for deployment process of a web app to perform testing to see how it performs in different frameworks. It often results in a network-wide slowdown but with PaaS the entire process of testing can be done on the cloud computing servers.

6.Web-based creation tools

 There is no need to separately license, install and maintain a set of tools for creating applications. PaaS services already provided you with the necessary environment. Web-based tools allow developers to work from any place with a wide array of devices.

7. Zero software maintenance

PaaS in cloud computing provides all the management and upgrades of both hardware and software so that the users can focus only on their business.

PaaS platforms help you focus on code not management so you can build, test and deploy applications without worrying about IT tasks or waiting for days to get servers ready for writing code.

8.Collaboration tools

PaaS provide a number of powerful collaboration tools allowing geographically dispersed development team to focus their efforts on creating and delivering a single piece of software.

❖    When to Use PaaS

There are two primary user groups that benefit from using Cloud at the PaaS level (compared to  IaaS level): Enterprises with their own intern software development activities and independent software vendors (ISVs) interested in selling SaaS services on top of a hosted PaaS.

At the same time there are many situations that utilizing PaaS is beneficial or even necessary. If there are multiple developers working on the same development project or if other vendors must be included as well PaaS can provide great speed and flexibility to the entire process.

PaaS is also beneficial if you wish to be able to create your own customized applications. This cloud service also can greatly reduce costs and it can simplify some challenges that come up if you are rapidly developing or deploying an app.

❖    Examples of PaaS

There are numerous PaaS examples out there that can be divided into several categories depending on their focus and specifics of distribution method they use.We have public (Heroku), private (Apprenda, OpenShift, Cloud Foundry), and hybrid (IBM Bluemix) PaaS solutions.

There are also mobile PaaS solutions specifically designed to provide capabilities for developing mobile applications. There are also PaaS systems specifically aimed to allow rapid development. The most famous among those are Mendix and Sales Force.

Apart from that, there are also open source based PaaS solutions, designed to allow applications to run in an open source environment rather than hosting them. A famous example of such platform is Google App engine.

• More about Cloud Foundry

Cloud Foundry a VMware-led project, is the world’s first ‘open’ PaaS offering. It provides a platform for building, deploying and running Cloud apps using Spring for Java developers and other JVM languages/frameworks including Rails, Sinatra, Node.js, Groovy, Grails and Scala.

Cloud Foundry is an application platform which includes a self-service application execution engine; an automation engine for application deployment and lifecycle management; a scriptable command line interface (CLI) for integration with development tools to ease development and deployment processes; an open architecture for quick development framework integration; an application services interface; and a Cloud provider interface.

One of the core tenets of Cloud Foundry is that it is free from underlying infrastructure. This gives users the option to use their existing infrastructure (desktop, datacenter and private Clouds) whilst still leveraging all the benefits of PaaS.

• If you have questions about the cloud (IaaS and PaaS) and how your next application could benefit,please reach out to The Pishro Group.Our cloud computing team has a reputation for providing right-sized solutions to the most complex challenges with which your business is faced.

❖   Conclusion

We hope that definition and examples above made the PaaS much clear for you .However PaaS offers keep gaining popularity. Extensive collaboration tools, ability to spread out costs over time and the fact that there is no need to worry about setting up and managing middleware is what makes developers use PaaS.

we find out PaaS increased support for automated Deployment and Added features/methods for reaching higher availability levels .If you were still considering whether it is worth it to go cloud computing, we hope that the information, provided in our blog helped you to make your mind and embrace this popular and convenient delivery model.

References

1. https://atos.net/content/dam/global/ascent-whitepapers/ascent-whitepaper-paas-making-the-most-of-clouds.pdf
2. https://www.apriorit.com/white-papers/405-saas-iaas-paas
3. http://rndgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/IaaS-Paas-Whitepaper.pdf
4. https://www.bmc.com/blogs/saas-vs-paas-vs-iaas-whats-the-difference-and-how-to-choose/
5. https://www.ibm.com/blogs/cloud-computing/2016/08/22/paas-benefits-characteristics/
6. https://www.dummies.com/programming/cloud-computing/hybrid-cloud/what-is-platform-as-a-service-paas-in-cloud-computing/
7. https://www.znetlive.com/blog/what-is-paas-in-cloud-computing/
8. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.07680.pdf

❖   IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is a cloud computing model whereby all the infrastructure is provided and maintained by the provider: servers, storage, networking, and so on. With IaaS, an organization can make wise investment in quickly growing with cloud rather than wasting huge amounts on purchasing and installing new hardware.

Similar to IaaS you simply pay a monthly fee to use resources as per your needs and the cloud provider is responsible for ensuring the maintenance of all the hardware and virtualized services.

IaaS includes virtual server space, IP addresses, network connections, internet connection, firewalls, bandwidths and load balancers etc.The major appeal behind IaaS is that delivers virtualized software & hardware computing resources.

Infrastructure as a service is the foundation and plays an important role for many enterprises on their journey towards Platform-as-a-service ( PaaS). It provides them the ability to create base compute images that provide network, storage and compute resource on-demand via automation.

IaaS services can also be used by enterprises to create easily-scalable and cost-effective methods of providing IT solutions.Compared to SaaS and PaaS, IaaS users are responsible for managing applications, data, runtime, middleware and OSes.

Providers still manage virtualization, servers, hard drives, storage, and networking. Many IaaS providers like pishro now offer databases, messaging queues, and other services above the virtualization layer as well.

❖    IaaS Characteristics

Some characteristics to look for when considering IaaS are:

• Resources are available as a service
• The cost varies depending on consumption
• Services are highly scalable
• Typically includes multiple users on a single piece of hardware
• Provides complete control of the infrastructure to organizations
• Dynamic and flexible

• IaaS Examples 

The following are some examples as to how IaaS can be used by businesses:

1)Cloud hosting

Hosting websites in the cloud is beneficial because it mitigates the vulnerability of physical servers. Unexpected demands and scalability can also be handled more easily in the cloud.

2)Private clouds

Accessible only by employees of the business – can help keep data confidential and provide more secure transfer of data. This infrastructure can be scaled by expanding businesses to match growth.

3)Virtual Data Centres

A network of virtual servers that are interconnected can provide superior cloud hosting abilities, enterprise-level IT infrastructure or the ability to integrate all of these processes in a public or private cloud.

• Example of IaaS provider

DigitalOcean, Linode, Rackspace, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cisco Metapod, Microsoft Azure, Google Compute Engine (GCE), Pishro Cloud Computing

❖   Benefits of having IaaS Cloud computing

IaaS is beneficial for  your organizations for a number of reasons.

• Resources are distributed as a service: The resources include CPU cores, hard disk or storage space, RAM, virtual network switches, vLANs, IP addresses and more. An IaaS provider provides its users with the hardware and the provisioning software that allows them to work as if they own a physical datacenter.

• Focus on business growth: Time, money and energy spent making technology decisions and hiring staff to manage and maintain the technology infrastructure is time not spent on growing the business. By moving infrastructure to a service-based model, organizations can focus their time and resources where they belong, on developing innovations in applications and solutions.

• Give you and your Employees Ubiquitous Accessibility :Regardless of where you or your employees are, as long as you are using a desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile phone and you have internet connectivity you can access your cloud server.  This is especially beneficial when employees need to work remotely for whatever reason or need to collaborate with multiple workers on a presentation.

• IaaS can run successfully even if a server goes down: Infrastructure as a Service provides greater reliability in which cloud providers can spread resources across multiple servers and data centers. It means if a particular hardware component fails or even if an entire data center goes offline, an organization’s infrastructure would not be affected.

• Get Started Immediately – The IaaS provider already has an infrastructure in place, enabling organizations to easily get their computing environment up and running in the cloud.

• You need to pay for only those services that you need and Makes Costs Predictable : with IaaS offerings you have to pay only for the time when the resources are used and only for those services that you actually need.IT Infrastructures can sometimes be more costly than expected, especially hardware upgrades or replacement is necessary.
  When companies more to the cloud they are no longer responsible for upgrading servers, routers or any other physical component. There will also be no need to replace failing hardware because that is also the cloud provider’s responsibility.

• Tight Security Controls – Hosting systems for multiple organizations, IaaS providers must have tight security measures in place to ensure that their customers’ infrastructures are protected from potential breaches.

Thus, IaaS can successfully remove the complexities and expenses associated with your IT infrastructure.

❖    When to Use IaaS

If you are a startup or a small company, IaaS is a great option so you don’t have to spend the time or money trying to create hardware and software. IaaS is also beneficial for large organizations who wish to have complete control over their applications and infrastructures but are looking for only purchase what is actually consumed or needed. For rapidly growing companies, IaaS can be a good option as you don’t have to commit to a specific hardware or software as your needs change and evolve.

It also helps if you are unsure what demands a new application will need as there is a lot of flexibility to scale up or down as needed.

❖  Using OpenStack for IaaS

OpenStack is a cloud computing platform. To make the virtual cloud computing technology flexible, businesses who want to create private or public clouds, need to be able to create and manage VMs fastly.

OpenStack creates abstracted pools of storage, compute and networking resources that can be used to create VMs on top of the server hardware.

If you want to experience this, use pishro cloud service and you will get the service with the following features:

• Complete management of application lifecycle.
• Ready integration with public clouds and virtualized environments.
• Ability to harness full power of an OpenStack cloud.
• Service logs.
• Block and object storage
• Direct object access
• Unlimited storage
• Easily add capacity

There are many reasons that it makes sense for organizations to turn their infrastructure over to the cloud; however finding the right service provider is a big part of the success of moving to this model.

Choosing a reliable vendor that offers the features and functionality at the right price point is essential.you can trust on pishro cloud computing and enjoy your business.

• Vmware vCloud vs OpenStack

OpenStack is a cloud computing platform. OpenStack provides an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and constitutes of resources such as compute, storage and network resources.OpenStack is a manager of multiple hypervisors. It is a collection of tools for managing and orchestrating cloud resources.

VMWare ESXi is a hypervisor but not a Cloud platform or toolkit. The VMware products that most directly map to OpenStack are not vSphere or ESXi, but vCloud Automation Center and vCloud Director. In fact, OpenStack does not have its own hypervisor but manages different hypervisors, such as KVM, Xen, Hyper-V AND ESXi. OpenStack is an open source system. It is fully distributed system. OpenStack keeps its services as decoupled as possible. This is designed to provide massive scalability. Vmware ESXi has tightly coupled architecture

• Industries:OpenStack is for cloud management platform for large providers,carriers and large outsources but Vmware is for virtualization for enterprises.

• Hypervisor:OpenStack supports variants of hypervisor and container such as KVM,Xen,VMware ESXi,Microsoft HYPER-V,Citrix XEN,Docker,LXC but VMware supports ESXi as the only default hypervisor

• Customer and operation access:OpenStack native dashboard, CLI but Vmware windows clients, vCloud Director

• Image management:OpenStack Glance Image service, support all popular image formats but vmware catalogs & templates,OVF import

• Management System:Nova (cluster controller) but Vmware vCenter

• APIs :For OpenStack based on Open REST APIs, compatibility with Amazon EC2 & S3, for Vmware is proprietary,mostly only under Perl and Powershell

• Storage:pluggable cinder:block volumes,Ceph,several vendor SAN but Vmware VMFS over SAN and iSCSI

• High Availability:Nova for VMs HA; OpenStack HA project for infrastructure components but Vmware vCenter Heartbeat

• Skills: for OpenStack high-end skills required,including system and network but for Vmware,basic system administration is needed

• Expansion: no actual limitation on OpenStack but Max 32 physical nodes on vmware vCloud,though not recommended

• Certification:certification by training companies such as Mirantis and Red Hat but all certification by Vmware company

Following table shows comparison of technical and non-technical features of VMware and OpenStack in brief:

VMware and OpenStack comparison

❖    Conclusion

Cloud Computing is a powerful and flexible software Environment .IaaS is one of the three fundamental cloud service model.Infrastructure as a service allows for programmed deployment of servers, storage, processing power, and networking. IaaS clients have true control over their infrastructure.

The main use of IaaS include the actual deployment and development of PaaS, SaaS, and web-scale application. comparison between Vmware and OpenStack is given and it shows that Vmware solves for the enterprise and OpenStack solves for cloud and both technology and philosophy are differ.

• references

1. https://www.znetlive.com/blog/what-is-iaas-and-benefits-of-iaas/
2. https://statetechmagazine.com/article/2014/03/infrastructure-service-5-important-benefits
3. https://www.softwareadvisoryservice.com/infrastructure/introduction-to-iaas-infrastructure-as-a-service/
4. http://www.siasmsp.com/benefits-of-infrastructure-as-a-service-iaas/
5. https://www.bmc.com/blogs/saas-vs-paas-vs-iaas-whats-the-difference-and-how-to-choose/
6. https://stackify.com/top-iaas-providers/
7. https://www.slideshare.net/RoozbehShafiee/comparing-openstack-and-vmware
8. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286733848/download
9. https://www.vaultnetworks.com/what-is-iaas-and-how-can-it-benefit-your-company/
10. https://apprenda.com/library/paas/iaas-paas-saas-explained-compared/