The Future of PaaS is Open, But Vendors Need To Focus

One could write a novel on the future of PaaS, and recent survey data has pointed to some areas where we are likely to see drastic movements in the near term. But, there were a few articles that appeared recently, highlighting some key areas of interest related to PaaS.

David Linthicum’s article, “What does PaaS really mean? Let us know if you find out,” details some of the issues the industry is struggling with in terms of defining what really constitutes a PaaS offering. With vendors looking to capitalize on the benefits and rising popularity of PaaS, there are a growing number of subcategories or spinoffs including integration services PaaS (iPaaS) and mobile PaaS (mPaaS). And while some of those are certainly the brainchild of marketing teams, the result is the dilution of what lies at the heart of PaaS. Which, as David concisely puts it, is “enabling enterprises to easily and quickly build business-critical applications that solve real business problems.” We couldn’t agree more, as is evidenced by Progress Pacific, and hopefully the rest of the industry will stay true to the original benefits that are driving PaaS adoption.

The other article, which appeared in SearchCloudComputing, resulted from a panel discussion at the recent Cloud Standards Customer Council symposium. Part of that discussion focused on the need to avoid vendor lock-in and take advantage of PaaS portability. This will not only make it easier for users to shop around as offerings evolve, but will enable them to mix and match accordingly to their unique needs, not those of any one particular vendor. This is certainly not a new argument. We can see a similar trend in mobile world with the Android/iOS debate. But with the current state of the cloud market, there’s no doubt that an open source future will yield the best results from a PaaS perspective.

Feel free to chime below with your thoughts. And if you’d like to check out a free 30-day trial of Progress Pacific you can do that here.