Value proposition of PaaS

It's simple: Bring your own code. What makes it so special then?

Have you ever had a new business idea but hesitate to try it out due to the risk related to the initial investment? If your business is related to internet services, maybe PaaS can help you. 

Perhaps the biggest promise of the Platform as a Service (PaaS) is the user's ability to try new things out with minimum risk. Just take an instance, deploy your code, and pay per use. If it's aint working as a business, then just quit it, and you didn't lost much.

Snapshot of Bluemix service configuration panel.

Let's take a closer look to some key aspects:

Pay per use

Do you know how many users you'll have on your new service? Seldom one can predict that, and it makes ROI calculation difficult. How about having your costs proportional to your user count. That means fixed production cost per production volume.

Modern PaaS services like Bluemix offer innovative payment models. The base charging unit of Bluemix is Gigabytehour (GBh), somewhat similar to kiloWatthours (kWh) you're paing for the electricity. The analogy is obvious: pay per use.

Focus on your code

You do not need to care about hardware, connectivity, or the software platform. Just select the necessary middleware services you need, and put all your energy on your application, which is the one who brings all the added value after all. It's the service provided by your application which matters to your customers, not the underlain infrastructure.

In traditional IaaS approach, you need someone capable of putting it all together and setting it up, and someone to maintain it and keep things rolling. With PaaS, it's all taken care on behalf of you. You only need to understand your application details.

Instantly in service

Just a few clicks to select components and services you need, and you're ready to deploy you code to production use. How about development then? Just use the same PaaS, but developed on your own sandbox. Once it's ready to publish, just deploy it to production by simple mouse click.

Maintenance free

If something is advertised as maintenance free, it usually means you can't fix it. In case of PaaS, you do not need to fix it, as someone is already doing that, and without you even notice it. 

IBM wrote about my thoughts in their blog at Sept. 23rd, 2014 (in Finnish):  Playground for developer - Early birds experiences

One can't avoid discussing about internet services without someone asking for security. That will topic for a next postings.