What is Platform as a Service (PaaS)?

PaaS provides an environment in which software developers can easily build, manage, deploy, and scale the applications they build. Examples of early PaaS offerings include Salesforce.com's Force.com and Google's AppEngine. A PaaS need not operate using IaaS (neither Force.com nor AppEngine do so), although many newer services run on the Amazon IaaS service (known as EC2), and the Standing Cloud PaaS can run on virtually any public IaaS.

The value of PaaS is that it enables software developers to build and operate an application without having to deal with system administration issues, like software installation and configuration, security, scaling management, backups, code management, etc. Instead, they can focus on building unique and valuable capabilities in the application software that their customers or clients can use.

Standing Cloud is a PaaS-plus, or Server-PaaS.

With it, an end user can deploy an application from our catalog and use it unchanged — similar to SaaS. A developer can deploy an application and then customize it — a combination of SaaS and PaaS. Or a fully custom application can be developed from scratch. At Standing Cloud, we view SaaS and PaaS as two ends of an application layer continuum where the amount of customization varies.