Today, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is increasingly gaining popularity as a Public Cloud offering compared to Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) because of its simple operations and lower costs. These days, most PaaS customers get locked-in because of the specialized OS or middleware features but for the customers looking for flexibility in working across multiple Cloud platforms and providers, a portable PaaS environment is a feasible choice.
Before we see how organizations can implement a portable PaaS model, let’s first see the primary reasons behind the adoption of PaaS services:
- Lesser costs of licensing and supporting because of the pre-installed OS and middleware.
- Streamlined Hybrid Cloud deployment with standardized application services.
- Improved application performance and functionality by creating a PaaS environment within the IaaS Cloud using the available web services.
How a portable PaaS model fairs across these three areas and how it moves within the various cloud and private environments is important but a single PaaS approach might not be enough to address this. Thus, enterprises need to prioritize their PaaS goals and combine different options to create the desired PaaS environment.
Here are the top 4 ways to achieve a Portable PaaS model:
Adopt Container Technology for Application Hosting: The container architectures share the Operating System, but the middleware and file system elements can be copied to each container to standardize the middleware across container images. This allows the creation of specialized container images for the application and the component which can then be moved across environments to be run on any container system hosted in Cloud or the Data Center.
Select and Standardize OS and Middleware Components with Modest Pricing or Discounts: Organizations can choose between using IaaS VMs or container-based services. Machine Image or Container Image building tools can then be used to check for Middleware and OS versions to ensure version uniformity for deployment. This approach can become challenging when an organization needs to expand its Cloud applications or change the underlying OS and Middleware. To simplify the process, enterprises would require a software support however, it is recommended to go for the tools which are made for the specific purpose of building a PaaS environment.
Use Tools to deploy PaaS on IaaS: Enterprises with large support staff can make use of various Cloud deployment and management tools to create and deploy applications based on standard OS and middleware elements. Although, these tools are complex to learn and use, they can help the staff in handling difficult tasks of managing OS and middleware versions and updates across multiple systems keeping the licensing costs same.
Use Micro-services: Application components needing specialized middleware can be made into micro-services that are called by the rest of the application on demand. This confinement of services will assure uniformity of implementation helping in reducing complexity and licensing costs. The same approach can be used to build private versions of web services allowing portability to applications across all IaaS clouds.
CONCLUSION: Enterprises have different shapes and sizes, therefore, a single PaaS approach may not be the right fit for all. Organizations need to combine different options according to their requirements to gain PaaS efficiencies without getting locked down. Assembling the best PaaS model may be a time-consuming process but it is definitely worth trying.
If you want to know more about PaaS offerings or if you want to migrate your enterprise applications to the portable PaaS environment, write to us at info@sysfore.com or give us a call at +91-80-4110-5555 and we’ll offer a free consultation!