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dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. 

Platform as 

a Service 

FOR 

‰ 

DUMmIES 

SPECIAL EDITION 

By Judith Hurwitz, 

Marcia Kaufman, and Fern Halper



Platform as a Service For Dummies, ® Special Edition 

Published by  

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.  

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ISBN: 978-1-118-23499-0 

Manufactured in the United States of America 

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Table of Contents 

Introduction ...................................... 1 

About This Book......................................................................... 1 

Foolish Assumptions.................................................................. 2 

How This Book Is Organized..................................................... 2 

Icons Used in This Book............................................................. 3 

Chapter 1: Setting the Fundamentals of the Cloud ..... 5 

Defining Cloud Computing......................................................... 5 

Defining Cloud Computing Models........................................... 7 

Deployment Models for Cloud Computing............................ 10 

Chapter 2: Getting into Platform as a Service. ....... 13 

Traditional Development and Deployment Challenges....... 13 

What Changes with PaaS........................................................ 15 

PaaS as Middleware in the Cloud............................................ 18 

Different Types of PaaS............................................................ 19 

Seeing the Business Value of Using a PaaS............................ 21 

Buying versus Building: The Business Imperative............... 22 

Chapter 3: Looking at PaaS as a Development Platform... 23 

Developing Applications in the Cloud.................................... 24 

The Role of Continuous Integration....................................... 25 

The Role of Application Development Services.................... 26 

PaaS Services for Development............................................... 28 

Chapter 4: Using PaaS as a Deployment Platform .... 33 

Deploying Applications to the Cloud..................................... 33 

The Role of Continuous Delivery............................................ 37 

Understanding PaaS Services for Deployment...................... 38 

Integrating with Existing Systems and Services.................... 39 

Chapter 5: Ten Steps to Take toward PaaS .......... 41 

Step 1: Get a Handle on Your Current Computing 

Environment.......................................................................... 41 

Step 2: Educate Yourself on the Value of PaaS..................... 42 

Step 3: Experiment with the Options...................................... 42 

Step 4: Figure Out What Your Requirements Are................. 43 

Step 5: Put Together an Evaluation Team.............................. 43 

Step 6: Conduct a Pilot Project............................................... 43 

Step 7: Plan a Well-Designed Organizational Structure........ 44 

Step 8: Continuously Evaluate Emerging Standards............. 44 

Step 9: Embrace the Continuum of the Develop/ 

Deploy Cycle.......................................................................... 44 

Step 10: Turn the Experience into a Strategy Roadmap...... 44 


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Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following: 

Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media 

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About the Authors 

Judith Hurwitz is a technology strategist, author, and thought leader and President of 

Hurwitz & Associates, a business technology consulting and research firm focused on 

the business benefits from technology investments. Marcia Kaufman, founding partner 

and COO of Hurwitz & Associates, has 20+ years in business strategy and industry 

research, working extensively in the financial services industry. Dr. Fern Halper, a 

partner at Hurwitz & Associates, has over 20 years of experience in data analysis, business 

and predictive analytics, enterprise computing, and strategy development. 

Together, Judith, Marcia, and Fern are coauthors of numerous For Dummies books.



Introduction 

Welcome to Platform as a Service For Dummies, Special 

Edition. Cloud computing is becoming an integral part 

of many companies’ business and technology strategies. The 

implication of the adoption of the cloud means that the IT 

organization is looking to leverage the cloud as a mechanism 

to build, deploy, and manage applications that live in the 

cloud in the form of Platform as a Service (PaaS). 

PaaS provides value within your organization to different 

constituents: 

✓ Business leaders: PaaS means that you can accelerate 

the delivery of new innovative applications without 

investing additional funds. You can experiment easily 

with innovative ideas to support strategic business 

initiatives without impacting your capital budget. 

✓ IT leaders: PaaS offers a well-architected solution that 

brings together all elements required to develop, deploy, 

and manage applications that are designed to run in a 

variety of delivery models, including public, private, or 

hybrid cloud models. The benefit for IT development and 

operations management is clear — with PaaS, IT is armed 

with a consistent platform that avoids some of the errors 

and inconsistencies that plague traditional approaches. 

About This Book 

This book gives you insights into what it means to leverage 

a consistent and flexible development and deployment 

approach in the cloud. You also discover elements of PaaS 

and how it provides a more agile development and deployment 

environment. This book helps business and technical 

leaders understand PaaS in context with the overall cloud 

model of computing.



2 

Platform as a Service For Dummies, Special Edition 

Foolish Assumptions 

The information on these pages is useful to many people, but 

we have to admit that we did make a few assumptions about 

who we think you are: 

✓ You’re already using various forms of cloud computing 

and are planning a long-term strategy to move more of 

your development and deployment of applications to the 

cloud. You understand the benefits of using all kinds of 

flexible cloud computing models and are ready to move 

forward with a development and deployment platform 

that gives your organization a competitive advantage. 

✓ You’re a business leader who wants IT resources to be a 

utility that’s optimized to leverage what you’ve already 

paid for. You want IT to serve your business needs — to 

execute your strategies on your timetable — and to be 

your partner in innovating for the future. 

✓ You’re an IT leader who knows a lot about technology 

but aren’t sure precisely how PaaS works. You need to 

understand how PaaS changes IT and what you need to 

do to support the business with cloud computing as an 

important enabler. 

How This Book Is Organized 

This book isn’t intended to be an exhaustive technical manual 

on implementing and managing cloud computing. Instead, it 

gives you a taste of the concepts and approaches you need to 

consider when embarking on your journey to PaaS. 

We’ve organized this book into five chapters: 

✓ Chapter 1 gives you an overview of the fundamentals of 

cloud computing, including Infrastructure as a Service 

(IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and PaaS. 

✓ Chapter 2 provides you with an understanding of the way 

PaaS helps address IT challenges, and it lays out the different 

approaches of PaaS and how it helps streamline 

development and IT operations.



Introduction 3 

✓ Chapter 3 delves into PaaS as a development platform. 

The chapter provides an overview of PaaS services for 

development and examines how companies can use these 

services to improve the quality of software development. 

✓ Chapter 4 explains the value of PaaS as a deployment 

platform with an overview on the PaaS services for 

deployment and the questions you should be asking 

potential providers. 

✓ Chapter 5 gives you a roadmap for getting started on 

your journey to PaaS. 

Icons Used in This Book 

The following icons are used to point out important information 

throughout the book: 

Tips help identify information that needs special attention. 

Pay attention to these common pitfalls of managing your 

cloud environment. 

This icon highlights important information that you should 

remember. 

This icon contains tidbits for the more technically inclined.



4 

Platform as a Service For Dummies, Special Edition



Chapter 1 

Setting the Fundamentals 

of the Cloud 

In This Chapter 

▶ Providing an overview of cloud computing and their models 

▶ Diving into the implementation strategies for cloud computing 

Cloud computing is emerging as one of the most important 

transformational trends in business and computing 

of the decade. You’re witnessing the beginning of a shift from 

an era where enterprises assume that they’ll own a complete 

infrastructure to an era where IT is designed as a set 

of services that are consumed by developers, partners, and 

customers. Cloud computing allows companies to respond to 

business initiatives more quickly, often at a much lower cost, 

and without the complexities associated with the computing 

models that have been in place for decades. With cloud 

computing, you can also innovate and transform IT into a set 

of flexible services that enable a more agile approach than is 

possible with traditional siloed computing models. 

In this chapter, we provide an overview of what cloud computing 

is and how it can help businesses to gain agility, flexibility, 

and innovation without massive capital expenditure. 

Defining Cloud Computing 

Cloud computing is a method of providing a set of shared 

computing resources that include applications, software, 

computing, storage, networking, development and deployment 

platforms, and business process. Cloud computing turns



6 


traditionally siloed computing assets into a shared pool of 

resources that are based on an underlying Internet foundation. 

Cloud computing makes these resources easier to use by 

supporting a self-service model so resources can be acquired 

or provisioned based on need or assigned business rules. 

At the same time, a business can use just the resources it 

needs to complete a task. After that task is completed, those 

resources can be returned to the pool. 

How does this work Some foundational capabilities are 

required to support this computing model, including the 

following characteristics: 

✓ Self-service provisioning and automatic de-provisioning: 

Provisioning technology provides an automated way for 

users to add and subtract services based on need and 

business requirements. 

✓ Elasticity and the ability to scale up and down: With 

elasticity, the user is able to acquire more resources in an 

on demand manner, for a small duration and pays for the 

capacity or capability they need. When those resources are 

no longer needed, the user is able to return that capacity. 

✓ Resource pooling: Cloud architectures enable the efficient 

creation of groups of shared resources that make 

the cloud economically viable. 

✓ Billing and metering of service usage: Because customers 

pay only for the resources they purchase or acquire, 

cloud computing environments include a way to monitor 

and measure usage. 

Equally important is that the cloud provides a new economic 

model of computing. Instead of purchasing, managing, and 

maintaining a software and server environment, a business is 

able to purchase computing on a situational basis, avoiding 

capital expenditures. If a company has already invested in an 

internal computing environment that best serves business 

requirements, portions of that environment can be transformed 

into what’s called a private cloud environment with 

the same self-service and service management characteristics 

as what’s called a public cloud service. 

While in both cases the cloud provides elasticity that allows 

the pool of resources to expand or contract based on need, 

some key differences still remain:



Chapter 1: Setting the Fundamentals of the Cloud 7 

✓ A public cloud makes an unlimited pool of resources, 

such as applications and storage, available to the general 

public over the Internet. Public cloud services may be 

free or offered on a pay-per-usage model. 

✓ A private cloud is more constrained to the size of the 

internal computing environment constructed by the company 

and may have to be set up, managed, and administered 

by the company itself. Access to a private cloud is 

restricted to those users who are granted permission. 

One important factor with these services is that the IT organization 

offloads the responsibility for maintaining the application or 

service. The public cloud provider takes over that responsibility. 

In addition, the organization can add services when they’re 

needed. This approach saves time, money, and effort. 

Defining Cloud Computing Models 

Your understanding of the benefits of cloud computing must 

begin with an understanding of the foundational services. The 

term service is defined as a task that has been packaged so it 

can be automated and delivered to customers in a consistent 

and repeatable manner. Any cloud service has a set of consistent 

characteristics: a customer can go to the self-service interface 

and add more compute, middleware, or database services 

or another application. When that service is no longer needed, 

its use is discontinued and no further charge is assessed. Three 

fundamental layers of cloud services exist: IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS. 

Getting straight with IaaS 

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is one of the most straightforward 

services of the cloud computing services. IaaS is the 

delivery of compute services including servers, networking, 

and storage, based on a rental model. IaaS has to be either a 

public or a private service. This differs from traditional hosting 

models because a service can be acquired for a set time period. 

In other words, the consumer of the service is charged only for 

that usage instead of having to sign a long-term contract.



8 


Understanding SaaS 

Software as a Service (SaaS) includes purpose-built business 

applications that are offered in the cloud. Hundreds of different 

types of services exist, ranging from Customer Relationship 

Management (CRM) systems to payment applications. 

What are the characteristics of a SaaS environment A SaaS 

platform is generalized enough so it’s useful to a wide variety 

of customers. Unlike applications that a company implements 

internally, a SaaS environment handles all the development and 

deployment details for the customer. The IT organization doesn’t 

have to handle operating system, database, software, or application 

version upgrades. This complexity is handled by the vendor. 

Therefore, the SaaS vendor includes the IaaS as well as the 

Platform as a Service (PaaS) as part of the environment. 

Many types of applications are available in the SaaS model. 

Typical SaaS applications include the following: 

✓ Accounting 

✓ Collaboration 

✓ Project management 

✓ Testing 

✓ Analytics 

✓ Content management 

✓ Internet marketing 

✓ Risk management 

✓ CRM 

What doesn’t work as SaaS A specialized one-of-a-kind application 

that supports the needs of a few users isn’t economically 

viable as a SaaS environment. Because SaaS vendors 

typically sell based on a monthly or yearly rental model, their 

products must be easy to use and easy for the end customer 

to manage. A SaaS application needs be designed in a modular, 

service-oriented manner.




Expanding into PaaS 

Not every service needs is available as a SaaS (see the preceding 

section). Sometimes the development organization has 

to build custom solutions to meet business demand. While 

developers could use an IaaS platform (see the section earlier 

in this chapter, “Getting straight with IaaS”) to create such an 

application, the approach isn’t very productive. Developers are 

responsible for bringing their own middleware and lifecycle 

tools to the platform; setting up the operating systems, middleware, 

and routing; and maintaining and patching those custom 

environments. PaaS has been developed to solve the problem 

of having to deal with so much complexity. PaaS is an integrated 

environment that supports the development, running, 

and management of cloud-based applications. 

PaaS providers create a managed environment that brings 

together integrated middleware and development services 

to support development organizations. These platforms 

create an abstracted environment that supports the creation, 

deployment, and management of a cloud environment. 

PaaS has the following things going for it: 

✓ PaaS is an entire infrastructure packaged so it can be 

used to design, implement, and deploy applications and 

services in a public or private cloud environment. 

✓ PaaS enables an organization to leverage key middleware 

services without having to deal with the complexities of 

managing individual hardware and software elements. 

✓ PaaS requires a complete stack of development tools that 

are accessible via a web browser (or any specialized tool, 

such as an IDE) in a self-service manner. 

The development and operations organizations now have a 

well-orchestrated platform that supports a consistent lifecycle 

approach by keeping track of the components required to track 

software configurations and versions. This approach helps organizations 

work consistently to manage the development and 

deployment process. In order to provide this level of abstraction, 

a number of components have to be included in a PaaS platform:



10 


✓ Application development and execution services 

✓ Integrated lifecycle services 

✓ Workload management services 

✓ Data management services 

Deployment Models for 

Cloud Computing 

Whether you’re interested in IaaS, SaaS, or PaaS, you need to 

understand how you may use one of these services to meet 

your company’s business requirements. The three different 

kinds of deployment models are public, private, or hybrid 

(a combination of the two). What separates the three cloud 

models is who actually owns, hosts, and operates the cloud 

resources. Location is also another big factor. What kind of 

deployment makes the most sense for you depends on factors 

ranging from industry regulations to your current investments 

in legacy systems. In this section, we detail each of these 

cloud models so you can get a better handle on your choices. 

The public cloud 

When people started talking about the notion of the Cloud a 

number of years ago, most were referring to what’s now called 

a public cloud. The public cloud is actually a set of servers, networks, 

storage, services, and interfaces owned and operated by 

a third party for use by other companies that are accessible from 

anywhere via the public Internet. Also, because of economies of 

scale, cloud-managed service providers can staff deep IT skills in 

specialty areas such as security so you don’t have to. 

For example, a company may decide to use a public cloud service 

for a workload, such as electronic mail (e-mail). E-mail is 

a good candidate for a public service because it’s a relatively 

generic application with a well-understood workload pattern. 

Companies that specialize in public cloud e-mail services can 

optimize their hardware and software environment to support 

this type of workload and provide different levels of security — 

for a price. In reality, these companies can provide e-mail services 

for a fraction of the price that it costs to run and support 

an internal mail service.




What enables the cloud provider economies of scale is a concept 

known as multi-tenancy, which means that different companies 

share all or some of the same underlying resources. One of the 

benefits of this platform is that on-boarding a new customer can 

be done in a cost-effective manner because the cloud doesn’t 

provide a fixed set of resources just for that customer. 

Of course e-mail isn’t the only service to be put into the cloud. 

Other examples include video services, human resources, and 

backup services — to name a few. 

Also, development, testing or deployment organizations may 

have periods of high demand followed by less active periods. 

In addition, these teams are often located across geographies. 

Having an optimized platform that can be scaled up or down 

based on demand is a logical economic model for many organizations. 

Running application development and testing in 

the cloud can be less expensive than buying and configuring 

servers. As long as the provider is trustworthy, companies are 

seeing the benefit of using this type of public cloud service. 

In the public cloud model, the end-user really doesn’t have to 

know anything about the underlying technology. The cloud 

provider is in charge of all the development and maintenance 

of the environment. If a problem exists, the cloud provider is 

responsible for fixing the problem. 

What’s a private cloud 

In some situations, a public platform (see the preceding section) 

may not be the most appropriate environment for an 

organization. The company may be part of a highly-regulated 

industry and needs to prove that its IT can comply with regulations. 

While companies like the freedom of the public cloud, 

they may need more direct control for a particular portion of 

their IT environments. The company may need a specialized 

custom security service and already have hardware and a 

hosting facility they want to amortize ownership of their infrastructure 

and solution, or, more simply utilize data and applications 

within an existing datacenter. Those companies could 

adopt what’s called a private cloud. 

What makes a private cloud different than a data center that 

includes some server virtualization Take a look at several 

key differences:



12 


✓ A private cloud includes automation of consistent processes 

and a self-service interface that allows internal 

IT operations and developers to allocate IT resources 

on demand. 

✓ The private cloud offers internal IT resources in a service 

delivery model. 

✓ The private cloud is designed to add automation to existing 

data and applications within a data center. 

✓ The private cloud manages pools of resources, including 

everything from compute capability to storage, analytics, 

process management, and middleware. 

✓ A private cloud implements custom security and governance 

capabilities specially designed for a company’s 

requirements. 

Understanding the hybrid cloud 

Most organizations that adopt a cloud-computing strategy 

discover that a hybrid approach fits well into their IT strategy. 

A hybrid cloud is an environment that utilizes both private 

and public cloud services to meet a business need. This 

environment allows a customer to make use of a combination 

of resources at the same time through a consistent set of services. 

For example, a business process may copy the results 

of a business transaction from a private environment into a 

public service, such as a sales automation SaaS environment. 

Through automation, this process can be executed according 

to best practices and in adherence with compliance rules. In 

some situations, a process may be established that requires 

data from a SaaS application to be physically stored in a private 

cloud within a particular country. 

The hybrid cloud is a single service that’s deployment agnostic 

depending on the needs of the business. Well-designed management 

tools need to be in place to ensure that the hybrid environment 

works well to support the business objectives.



Chapter 2 

Getting into Platform 

as a Service 


▶ Dealing with the challenges of development and deployment 

▶ Looking into the changes with PaaS 

▶ Putting PaaS and middleware together in the cloud 

▶ Understanding the benefits of PaaS 

In Chapter 1, we provided an overview of what the components 

and approaches to cloud computing mean to your 

organization. In this chapter, we mention the challenges of 

traditional software development and deployment by using a 

fictitious company called HealthFirst. Through this example, 

we hope you see how a business — possibly like yours — 

deals with Platform as a Service (PaaS) challenges. 

We also discuss the opportunities for saving money, improving 

productivity, and the ability to react to changes quickly by 

using a PaaS. You see the benefits in leveraging cloud-based 

development and deployment platforms by utilizing a PaaS 

model. You look at the different approaches to PaaS so you 

can determine which approach serves your organization best. 

Traditional Development and 

Deployment Challenges 

HealthFirst, a fictitious company that provides healthcare services 

to hospitals and group medical practices, is a good example 

to illustrate the challenges with traditional development



14 


and deployment of PaaS. The company distinguishes itself from 

other health services companies by providing more efficient 

ways to manage patient records and billing, improving the 

quality of patient care, and increasing community awareness of 

health and wellness services. The company depends on sophisticated 

and differentiated software applications to continue to 

thrive in an increasingly complicated market. As the business 

continues to grow, it faces four kinds of challenges. 

Collaboration and coordination 

across a growing company 

HealthFirst is a fast-growing company and customers are pressing 

for more services, including a Software as a Service (SaaS) 

delivery model. To meet the changing needs, HealthFirst began 

expanding its development organization, which was already 

spread across multiple locations in many different time zones. 

Collaboration became difficult with the following problems: 

✓ Coordinating the software development across regions 

✓ Determining what was working 

✓ Reporting the state of development across the organization 

or even across a complex project 

With these additional issues, inevitably, mistakes crept into 

the process. 

Managing a fast-paced 

development environment 

In order to respond more quickly to rapidly changing business 

application needs, HealthFirst also moved to an agile (for 

example, iterative and incremental) development and deployment 

process. This change meant that management began 

implementing a process that strived for a continuous delivery 

of new features and functionality. 

This transition was required because the traditional development 

process that accumulated a large number of code 

changes into periodic builds was too time consuming and 

error prone to support the “always working” software model



Chapter 2: Getting into Platform as a Service 15 

that it needed. The company realized it needed a more automated 

environment to support its new way of doing things. 

Middleware complexity 

HealthFirst had an additional underlying issue with middleware, 

development, and deployment tools that were complicated 

to learn, implement, maintain, and use. (For more info 

on middleware, see the section “PaaS as Middleware in the 

Cloud” later in this chapter.) 

For example, the development organization purchased more 

than 50 different tools over the years, which resulted in a 

complex and fragile stack of software tools and platforms 

that required skilled individuals to maintain and manage. If 

a developer with deep knowledge of a tool or scripts left the 

company, the project often ran into problems. Because of the 

complexity of the overall development process, software quality 

became unpredictable. 

Obtaining compute resources 

As projects grew in size and complexity, HealthFirst’s development 

team often ran out of compute or storage resources. 

Getting machines and configurations to support (often crossplatform) 

development and testing was difficult. Teams lost 

weeks while waiting for the centralized procurement organization 

to allocate the systems they needed to complete a project. 

Because of this procurement bottleneck, developers 

tried to hold on to resources so they always had the 

resources they needed. 

What Changes with PaaS 

PaaS helps reduce the complexity of the development process 

by delivering and managing hosted software services used by 

developers, which eliminates the installation and operational 

burden from developers. PaaS accelerates the development 

and delivery process because developers use the same services 

to develop against that their end-users interact with in 

production. By encompassing both development and runtime 

services, PaaS can streamline the application lifecycle.



16 


In this section, we describe just how PaaS can help, including 

standardizing middleware, easing provisioning, working 

across the organization, and improving control. 

Reducing complexity with a PaaS 

The complexity of many IT environments results in highlyskilled 

developers spending too much time working on manual 

tasks and solving operational problems. In a PaaS environment, 

capabilities ranging from compilers, development tools, data 

management, security, and middleware are abstracted (the 

concept is separated from the implementation instance). 

In most PaaS environments, infrastructure details are hidden 

from the developer. Instead, the PaaS environment provides 

an interface that exposes typical features and use cases 

developers are primarily concerned with, such as versioning 

and roll-backing of applications — not servers — pushing an 

application from development to production in simple steps 

or implementing high availability for a given application. 

A well-designed PaaS environment can automate routine tasks 

and help improve collaboration between development and 

operations teams through the ways in this section. 

Standardizing middleware infrastructure services 

PaaS is hosted middleware (for example, software that connects 

application components) that sits on top of IaaS. You 

can think about the role of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) 

within the environment as doing the work to allocate memory, 

disk, and the like. In contrast, a PaaS platform sitting on 

top of IaaS, provides seamless integration with middleware, 

such as databases and distributed caching technologies, 

to ensure zero data and transaction loss in the face of truly 

elastic underlying IaaS. SaaS sits on top of the combination of 

IaaS and PaaS. This layering helps to reduce complexity and 

ensure consistency and management of resources. 

Ease of service provisioning 

A PaaS provides easy provisioning of development services, 

including build, test, and repository services to help eliminate 

bottlenecks associated with non-standard environments, 

which in turn improves efficiency, reduces errors, and ensures




consistency in the management of the development lifecycle. 

Additionally, PaaS provides ease of provisioning in runtime 

services, including application runtime containers for staging, 

running, and scaling applications. 

Minimizing friction with IT 

Traditionally, when a new application server or other middleware 

was introduced into an organization, IT needed to 

make sure that the middleware could access other services 

that were part of the application. Development and Quality 

Assurance (QA) had to wait for IT to help them with this — 

sometimes causing intradepartmental friction. 

With PaaS, conflict is minimized because all middleware is 

easier to manage and connect. 

Improving the control over IT resources 

In PaaS, resources can be acquired from a pool of shared 

software assets by using a self-service process. When the 

resource is no longer needed by the developer, it can be automatically 

returned. This empowers development and QA to 

drive processes and reduce demands on IT. 

Improving collaboration 

PaaS changes the way that development and operations interact 

with resources. Instead of traditional application development 

being hand offs, with PaaS, the state of software becomes 

more visible to the organization. For instance, a developer may 

say that a module of an application is complete, but he hasn’t 

tested it on all Web browsers. With PaaS, the team can see 

whether software is working, broken, ready to be released to 

manufacturing, staged, and so on across the entire application 

lifecycle. You can buy this functionality, but it’s native to PaaS. 

To leverage many of the benefits of PaaS, you may need to 

make a tradeoff. For example, if you want to update your 

application and choose to go with tools that aren’t part of the 

prescribed environment, the process can still be done, but 

you lose some of the efficiency of working within a more controlled 

environment. If you break the mold and do it outside 

the framework, you need to do it manually. In other words, 

you can be locked into the vendor’s platform tools.



18 


PaaS and the application lifecycle 

In PaaS, the application lifecycle from development through 

testing, staging, and deployment is baked into the platform. 

The development and runtime platforms are provided as services, 

so the formal lifecycle of an application is more directly 

supported. For example, developers and test teams interact 

with the same hosted application and runtime as the operations 

people use. 

One of the impacts of having an abstracted platform is that 

it supports development to deployment to operation procedures 

that today are mostly manual, which helps support agile 

development (discussed in more detail in Chapters 3 and 4). 

Removing the manual processes enables faster development 

release cycles, which in turn can support more rigorous methods 

around quality and continuous integration. 

PaaS as Middleware 

in the Cloud 

Middleware is the glue that helps connect software components 

and is a critical method of delivering standardized 

application services, but it can be complicated. When middleware 

services are hosted, like they are in a PaaS, they can 

provide a development team with the ability to pre-determine 

how the organization wants connectivity to happen and how 

integration between services is handled. IT management can 

then set the rules upfront about what types of services to use 

under specific business conditions. 

For example, an organization may want to mandate the use of 

a specific database for an application because of the need to 

have sufficient transaction speed. Because this abstraction 

of middleware is service based, its Application Programming 

Interfaces (APIs) are typically well defined, so managing the 

integration is simplified. 

You used to have to install resources and interact with them 

on your machines. Now, those services are managed and 

made available to you with PaaS. You’ll see some key differences 

between PaaS and traditional middleware:




✓ Resources aren’t delivered as software in PaaS. Instead, 

they’re hosted, always-on, on-demand, served up 

as services. 

✓ The scope of where development and delivery can take 

place in a PaaS is the cloud instead of a single machine 

or process. 

✓ Resources in the data center, now served up by IaaS, 

are managed by the PaaS for the purposes of supporting 

applications. It’s not just the machine supporting the 

application. In fact, Cloud IaaS means infrastructure is 

available programmatically, so middleware can now be 

expanded to take direct advantage of it. 

Without infrastructure constraints, you can deliver and 

update software continuously. This process is harder in 

older-generation middleware with hardcoded endpoints. 

✓ Middleware and services have no installation and configuration 

because they’re an integral part of the PaaS platform. 

Different Types of PaaS 

All PaaS environments aren’t the same. You need to consider 

several different approaches to PaaS. 

PaaS anchored to a 

SaaS environment 

Some SaaS platforms are becoming core business services for 

many companies. Offerings, such as Workday, SugarCRM, and 

Salesforce.com, are replacing traditional on-premises systems 

of record. Some of these SaaS vendors focus on expanding 

their offerings to the platform level. Salesforce.com, for example, 

provides a PaaS platform called Force.com that exposes 

the native Salesforce.com APIs, development tools, and middleware 

so it becomes a platform that software developers 

can use to build new applications on top of. 

This approach can be sensible if a company wishes to extend 

the capabilities of their Salesforce.com (or other kinds of 

SaaS) applications.



20 


PaaS tied to an operating 

environment 

When you tie a PaaS to an operating environment, you can 

perform certain actions easier. This approach makes sense if 

the customer is certain to use only a specific IaaS provider to 

run its applications and doesn’t require the depth of a dedicated 

PaaS provider. 

Companies like Microsoft with its Azure platform and Amazon 

with Beanstalk are offering their APIs and abstractions so 

developers can build or deploy applications with this support. 

For example, the Windows Azure platform is based on 

Windows and SQL abstractions. Microsoft has abstracted 

a set of development tools, management, and services. For 

customers with deep expertise with .NET, the movement 

to the Azure based PaaS is straightforward. The developer, 

in essence, ties the development and deployment to the 

Microsoft infrastructure. 

Amazon.com offers its own PaaS platform focused on deployment. 

The PaaS environment, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, is 

intended to help customers who’ve built applications on 

Amazon’s cloud to more easily deploy and manage applications 

within the Amazon AWS cloud. 

Open platform-based 

PaaS environments 

Open platform-based PaaS is intended to promote an open process 

and environment that isn’t tied to a single cloud implementation. 

Several open platform initiatives are underway: 

✓ Cloud Foundry is a VMware-led project that’s a PaaS 

environment for building, deploying, and operating 

cloud applications. 

✓ OpenShift is a Red Hat initiative. 

✓ CloudBees is a Java PaaS platform that’s independent of 

the underlying platform and is intended to allow developers 

to cover the full application “build, test, run, manage” 

lifecycle, either on a public or hybrid cloud.




Seeing the Business Value 

of Using a PaaS 

You can enjoy a number of business benefits from using a 

PaaS. This section includes those perks. 

Reducing costs 

PaaS can certainly reduce costs. And in order to evaluate the 

economic impact of PaaS, take a look at the costs that are 

directly and indirectly related to the application or type of workload 

you want to move to the cloud. These costs may include 

✓ Server and storage overhead: Unused computing capacity 

requires power and cooling to run as well as demanding 

floor space that’s often a huge expense for companies. 

✓ Network: Network bandwidth in data centers isn’t unlimited. 

Many companies find moving commodity services 

to cloud-based services more cost effective. This practice 

frees up expensive network capacity, floor space, 

and energy consumption. 

✓ Software maintenance: The cost of managing software 

updates and changes is often a burden to development and 

operational organizations and a huge expense both in terms 

of time and money. While a platform requires a per-user, 

per-month charge, the cost is typically offset by the cost of 

software license costs and yearly maintenance fees. 

✓ Support personnel: These costs include staff responsible 

for everything from storage and archiving to patch management, 

networks and security, and help desk. 

Improving speed, flexibility, 

and agility 

Continuous delivery, if adopted, is the ultimate goal to get 

products to market faster and to align with agile development 

practices. PaaS can help



22 


✓ Enable faster time to market and the ability to react to 

changes and opportunities quickly without huge upfront 

investments and heavyweight planning. 

✓ Expand your organization’s investments as needed, 

becoming more competitive. 

Buying versus Building: The 

Business Imperative 

The PaaS option has two pieces: One is the platform, and 

the other is service. The PaaS isn’t just delivering software 

to your organization; it’s servicing it as well. As new updates 

and new configurations are authorized, the PaaS-based cloud 

service can control keeping the software updated based on 

customer requirements. 

One of the primary decisions you need to make is whether 

you want to setup, configure, maintain, and administer 

the PaaS yourself (either on a public or private IaaS) or 

whether you want a provider to give you a fully-serviced 

PaaS offering — leaving you as the consumer of that PaaS, 

not as the maintainer. 

If your organization decides to manage a PaaS based on your 

own purchased software, you’re still required to manage the 

details, including setup, configuration, monitoring, maintaining, 

and patching the software. 

When a company decides to use a service to manage these 

tasks, the result is reduced friction between the development 

and deployment organization. There will, of course, be situations 

when it’s critical for the internal team to control and 

manage complex software environments.



Chapter 3 

Looking at PaaS as a 

Development Platform 


▶ Developing applications in the cloud 

▶ Understanding the role of continuous integration in PaaS 

▶ Looking at the core of PaaS support: Application development services 

▶ Knowing which PaaS services for development are right for you 

You may be wondering how Platform as a Service (PaaS) 

development in the cloud differs from the traditional 

on-premises approach. How will PaaS help to make the 

development process faster and more secure What will this 

approach mean for your development team 

In this chapter, we provide you with an overview of what it 

means to use PaaS as a development environment. We describe 

how PaaS services can raise the performance standards for all 

developers on a team by making it easier to incorporate best 

practices for achieving software quality. You get a foundation 

for understanding how your organization can take advantage of 

PaaS to meet your goals. 

Make sure that the environment you use in the cloud to develop 

your applications provides you with the most effective and most 

secure services. Developing in this way also impacts how your 

development and operations teams function.



24 


Developing Applications 

in the Cloud 

Developing in a PaaS environment is different than the way 

development organizations have produced software over the 

past few decades. In a traditional model, the development 

team may select a variety of different tools — operating systems, 

middleware, testing products, and the like. Many organizations 

have been very effective with this approach. However, 

typically, problems of managing complexity exist — especially 

in an era where more and more aspects of daily life are controlled 

by software. 

Managing the complexity of traditional software development 

environments often translates into spending a lot of time 

and money on building, managing, maintaining, and upgrading 

these environments. As a result, companies have fewer 

resources to apply to designing, developing, and testing software. 

The net impact on developers is that they may fall short 

of achieving their primary objectives: 

✓ Producing high-quality and secure software 

✓ Meeting user expectations 

✓ Completing software development projects on time and 

within budget 

PaaS, on the other hand, provides hosted services used during 

development, such as middleware and operating systems. 

Because these services are always available for a developer to 

use without installation, maintenance, or IT support, the developer 

doesn’t have to deal directly with complex services and 

middleware — unless they want to be exposed to the details. 

PaaS can bring many advantages in terms of improving the 

economics of the development process and increasing the 

speed and agility of the development teams. In addition to 

providing self-service access to infrastructure resources, 

many PaaS vendors take responsibility for the IT platform 

maintenance and security requirements that are typically 

managed by developers and IT staff. The company benefits 

from a decrease in capital expenditures by eliminating the 

need to buy servers, middleware, and other infrastructure to



Chapter 3: Looking at PaaS as a Development Platform 25 

support all resource requirements. In addition, PaaS costs are 

typically relative to the number of users, so platform costs are 

more in line with overall development costs and salaries. 

By using a PaaS environment for development, individual developers 

and their IT partners can enjoy these additional benefits: 

✓ Continue to use development tools they already understand 

and value but in a cloud environment 

✓ Increase the focus on the business goals because the 

details of configurations or selecting and integrating 

development tools are handled behind the scenes 

✓ Avoid costly mistakes by making the process easier to 

incorporate continuous integration while developing faster 

✓ Write more secure code because the PaaS automatically 

manages security updates and has data privacy and protection 

rules built into the fabric of the environment 

✓ Write higher-quality code by leveraging sophisticated 

software development tools that would otherwise be 

very costly to implement and maintain 

✓ Speed up development time by eliminating the need to 

request and wait for additional IT infrastructure 

✓ Speed up development time by eliminating the need to 

do maintenance work and upgrade components 

✓ Deliver applications on multiple devices and multiple 

operating systems faster 

The Role of Continuous 

Integration 

Continuous integration is a technique that follows continuous 

build and test patterns and — makes sure software defects are 

detected as early as possible. Continuous integration and testing 

is the best way to make sure that the product always works 

even while coding is ongoing. While this software development 

best practice isn’t unique to the cloud, it’s critically important 

for companies aiming to become successful with PaaS because 

developers are able to increase the speed at which they deliver



26 


products in PaaS environments — so much so, in fact, that 

teams can easily get out of synch with one another. 

Sometimes, synchronizing development teams’ efforts may be 

difficult. The contributing factors include 

✓ Teams that are distributed across business units or different 

geographic regions of a company 

✓ Software code that needs to work across multiple platforms 

and devices 

✓ Software development process that requires individual 

components that all need to work together in a service 

oriented way 

✓ Market dynamics that lead to faster software development 

lifecycle 

The software quality and time to develop may suffer unless 

the team has a way to test for, locate, and fix errors early 

in the software development process. 

While it can be hard for development teams to keep in synch in 

traditional software environments, these challenges can be magnified 

in PaaS because of the increased speed of development. 

In PaaS, continuous integration is easier because the IT 

staff doesn’t need to install and manage new hardware and 

software or manage many other aspects of overall platform 

infrastructure. In fact, PaaS helps to make possible a very 

aggressive form of continuous integration that’s required to 

support the fast-paced and highly-iterative development process 

needed to develop Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions. 

The Role of Application 

Development Services 

Application development services are the core of PaaS support 

for the development process. They’re the anchor services 

that streamline the process of developing applications in 

the cloud. A PaaS platform




✓ Provides the developer with a complete environment to 

provision, develop, build, test, and stage applications 

✓ Abstracts the details from the developer so developers 

can focus on the task of coding and not on supporting 

the systems needed for development and testing 

An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software 

application that includes all the tools that a software developer 

needs to develop software. Typically, the programs 

included in an IDE can be used to write, change, compile, 

deploy, and debug software. IDEs are commonly used by 

developers on their desktops in traditional environments and 

can also be used with shared cloud services when using PaaS. 

When the IDE is used with the cloud, you, as the developer, 

have some key advantages: 

✓ You can still use your existing IDE on your desktop, but it 

becomes much easier and faster to share your code with 

other members of your team. 

✓ You can push your code into a shared repository in the 

cloud so everyone has immediate access to the same 

code and tools. 

✓ You can test your code during development against the 

same systems your end-users will access, using services 

provided by the PaaS. 

As a result, errors in the code are found earlier, and the 

resulting applications are delivered faster. 

A well-designed PaaS environment has enough flexibility and 

modularity that it can be useful in many different scenarios 

and handle a wide range of development objectives. In addition, 

the PaaS environment must be able to support the 

developer with a wide range of services that encompasses 

the entire software development lifecycle. 

To ensure that your PaaS provider offers the right set of flexible 

services so you can make the most of your PaaS development 

environment, use the following checklist:



28 


✓ Can you choose from a menu of à la carte services so you 

can select the services that are right for you 

✓ Can you start slowly with just a few services and then 

add on later if needed 

✓ Are your choices constrained in any way based on the 

specifications of your PaaS provider 

✓ Will your PaaS provider host the specific services you 

want to use so you can use them in the PaaS environment 

and you don’t have to host them yourself 

✓ Are sophisticated build-and-testing services made available 

in such a way to encourage early identification of 

software coding errors 

PaaS Services for Development 

The same set of PaaS services isn’t right for everyone. You 

should demand flexibility and a variety of options from your 

PaaS vendor. This section gives you the most important software 

development services that may be offered by your 

PaaS provider. 

Hosted software configuration 

management services 

Developers use software configuration management services 

to keep track of the different versions and modules of code 

that are created during the software development process. 

The code is stored in an online repository. GitHub is an example 

of a popular hosted service used for this purpose. 

Software configuration management services help the developer 

to manage the sandbox environment used to create and 

test code. The developer stores software code (sometimes 

also known as a forge) in the sandbox. This environment 

needs to include the right operating system and tools, such 

as source code editors, debuggers, compilers, performance 

profilers, and source code management systems to know 

when and how a piece of software has changed.




Build services 

The PaaS should be able to support a variety of application 

build processes that allow developers to combine services 

into a deployable application. The build process contains 

several steps, including writing code, compiling code into an 

executable, invoking code, running, and then testing the code. 

When creating an application, the developers generally produce 

multiple modules of code with dependencies. The build services 

in the PaaS should help the developer keep track of the individual 

modules of code. Some examples of these build tools are 

✓ Maven: Used by most Java developers to build and 

assemble their applications as well as manage dependencies 

to other 3rd party software modules 

✓ Maven repositories: Online repository where built 

(binary) software is stored and versioned along with 

associated meta-data, where it can be retrieved and 

consumed by other software based on their declared 

dependencies 

Web application server 

The PaaS environment helps developers quickly test the 

applications they’re building by allowing developers to deploy 

using the production runtime system. This type of testing is 

important because a developer typically creates a web application 

by using his own local environment, and due to the 

difficulty of getting access to more than a single machine, the 

developer’s environment may be very different from the production 

environments. 

To tighten testing cycles, the developer may use an in-process 

web application server that works perfectly on a local environment 

but then behaves differently in production. The PaaS 

makes it simple to access and isolate production systems, so 

developers can stop wasting time mocking up simulations and 

avoid the risk of discovering runtime errors in production or 

at late stages of delivery.



30 


Frameworks 

Developers typically use a development framework to help 

create quality software that performs well under varying conditions. 

While frameworks are used in traditional software 

environments, these frameworks can be more consistently 

shared across large distributed teams when used in a PaaS 

environment. Some of the key benefits of using frameworks in 

a PaaS environment include 

✓ Quickly establishing a consistent structure for an 

application 

✓ Accessing secure and tested foundational software 

modules for coding 

✓ Accessing run-time services for testing to make sure that 

the application runs properly in production 

Your PaaS provider may have the following two examples of 

frameworks available: 

✓ Spring: One of the most commonly used application 

development frameworks for enterprise Java 

✓ The Play framework: For building web applications with 

Java and Scala 

Database services 

One of the most important tests for a new application is to 

understand how it works with real end-user data. This type 

of testing often presents a challenge for developers because 

the application may be intended to work with data stored in 

a very large and complex database. Developers often install 

a lightweight database in their development environment in 

order to test the code with data but aren’t able to test against 

a true production database during the development phase. 

One of the major advantages of developing in a PaaS environment 

is that the developer can have immediate access to a 

database with the same characteristics of the eventual production 

database. For example, if the application needs to call 

a MySQL database in production, the developer can leverage 

PaaS database services to test the code with hosted MySQL 

database already provided by the PaaS.




Test and automation tools 

Testing services can be built into the PaaS platform or provided 

by its ecosystem of services. These services can include User 

Interface testing or load testing. Access to these tools is beneficial 

to companies of all sizes; however, the impact on small 

to midsize companies can be huge. Smaller companies may not 

have the resources to purchase and maintain the state of the 

art tools designed to improve the quality of the development 

process. These smaller teams can use PaaS to have access to 

the same best practice environment that many of the larger 

competitors have built in house at a very high price. 

Test and automation tool examples include the following: 

✓ Jenkins: Most widely used continuous integration server; 

initiates build jobs as developers check-in code, works 

with Maven, and contains many plug-ins to customize 

how and why the builds happen, and to connect to various 

supporting systems 

✓ Selenium: Designed for testing how your software performs 

with multiple browsers, such as Safari, Chrome, 

and Firefox 

✓ Sonar: Provides feedback on the quality of your code 

Performance analysis tools 

A limitation exists on how many different kinds of tests can be 

applied to the code in the developer’s own local environment. 

Performance analysis, including production profiling and load 

testing, is hard for the developer to do on his own. The developer 

may not be able to replicate the wide range of machines 

and networks that may be found in end-user environments. 

Examples of cloud-based tools designed for this purpose include 

✓ SOASTA: Leverages clusters of cloud machines to simulate 

user load on your application based on a number of 

criteria (number and type of clients, geographical location, 

load pattern, and so on) 

✓ New Relic: Designed to provide insight to end-user behavior, 

monitor server behavior, and identify bottlenecks



32 


Development-to-test-to-production 

coordination services 

The PaaS provider can provide services that enable updates 

of cloud applications without interrupting services. For example, 

in your own data center, you may roll out the new version 

of the software to one segment of users at a time. With PaaS, 

you can make sure that the flow between development, testing, 

and deployment is more seamless. PaaS helps you guarantee 

no loss of uptime. 

While these concerns cross more into deployment, they also 

impact development. For example, a Java web application may 

make use of a session store to ensure the state is maintained 

in the event of failure and across updates. The PaaS provider 

can help by providing a session store capability built-in and by 

automatically coordinating the update rollout process. So, the 

developer can make use of the session store directly and also 

test to make sure it always works properly during the development 

lifecycle. As the application is updated, the developer can 

also ensure that application-level changes work across versions 

that use the same session store.



Chapter 4 

Using PaaS as a 

Deployment Platform 


▶ Using the cloud to deploy applications 

▶ Gaining competitive advantage with continuous delivery in PaaS 

▶ Outlining the important PaaS services for deployment 

▶ Integrating PaaS with existing systems and services in your data center 

J 

ust as there are complexities with the development process 

(see Chapter 3 for more info), deploying applications 

to the cloud in a traditional model means managing a 

heterogeneous set of application services, data services, various 

middleware, and integration services. For example, the 

development or operations team has to think about how these 

services are configured, deployed, and managed according to 

changing requirements. You also have the issue of scaling the 

application as needed. In this chapter, you get an overview of 

what it means to use PaaS as a deployment environment. 

Deploying Applications 

to the Cloud 

The usage of general cloud resources and easy availability of 

the underlying infrastructure makes putting the deployment 

of applications into operation much easier. Cost efficiencies 

are gained based on the standardized delivery of services in 

a multi-tenant architecture. PaaS automates many aspects 

of the deployment lifecycle that are typically managed by IT



34 


development staff in traditional environments. Some of the 

deployment functions built into PaaS platforms are 

✓ Allocating resources 

✓ Staging and testing applications 

✓ Provisioning nodes on the server clusters 

✓ Installing, configuring, and securing load balancers, 

application servers, and databases 

The standardization of PaaS deployment lifecycle services 

means that the services are both easier to deploy and maintain 

consistently. In a PaaS environment, all the key deployment 

functions are abstracted from the developer masking 

them from the complexities of these sophisticated features. 

As a result, PaaS makes the process of updating applications 

after they’ve been deployed faster and more efficient. 

PaaS takes on the responsibility of connecting applications. 

The integration services provided with the PaaS make this 

simple. Some issues still remain for consideration, including 

service management, access to a variety of services, and integration 

across environments. 

Staging and testing 

applications in PaaS 

The PaaS environment allows for much greater flexibility in the 

way that deployment teams create staging areas — environments 

used to test changes to a private version of an application 

before the new or revised application goes live — for their 

applications. It can take a lot of time and manual effort on the 

part of the IT team to get the staging area set up appropriately. 

The staging area needs to completely replicate the databases, 

web servers, connections, and other dynamic components of 

the application environment or you run the risk of allowing 

errors into your live system. All of this can be quickly and easily 

handled with PaaS allowing developers to focus more on meeting 

customer requirements and less on IT infrastructure issues. 

Basically with PaaS, you can take a much more logical and 

practical approach to the staging and testing of applications. 

As a user of PaaS deployment services, you expect the following 

in your staging environment:



Chapter 4: Using PaaS as a Deployment Platform 35 

✓ Full mirror of your live environment for the switch 

✓ Rollback to pre-change environment if errors are found 

✓ Partition existing cloud resources for phased deployment 

and testing within pre-defined limits 

How do these PaaS capabilities impact the testing process 

prior to rolling out a new version of an application Consider 

the developer who needs to roll out a new version of an online 

shopping application for a retailer. She has ten servers running 

the existing application. In the past, her approach has 

been to take one server offline at a time. This approach introduces 

operational problems: 

✓ A reduction in the amount of resource currently serving 

the existing application to be able to introduce the new 

version. If the new version causes a change in load or 

code path, or servers are already highly utilized, users 

may see degradation in service. 

✓ As the new application becomes more heavily loaded 

with real users, a stress-related issue may arise in production 

that was difficult to test for. So, the rollout process 

may need to be rolled back — quickly — and the 

operational processes for rollback can be at least as 

difficult as for rollout. 

These operational problems can easily be eliminated with 

PaaS. The new version rollout can be handled in a different 

way. With PaaS, the developer can create ten new instances 

in a completely replicated environment — the new instances 

have the new application but otherwise are 100 percent like 

the old ones. The new requests can all be routed to the new 

instances in a controlled manner, and you don’t need to cannibalize 

the existing with the live environment. 

If an unexpected error occurs, your full existing environment 

is in place, so you can guarantee no loss of service. 

When you’re comfortable with the new application, you can 

retire the old systems. In a pay-as-you-go PaaS environment, 

this approach is simpler, because traditionally the process 

involves meetings, planning, installing, and wiring.



36 


Advantages of PaaS 

for deployment 

Many of the advantages of the PaaS model for deployment are 

based on the efficient use of computing resources resulting 

from the multi-tenant cloud environment. The deployment 

team benefits by having much more time to focus on the 

specific demands of deploying high-quality applications. The 

easy availability of infrastructure in the PaaS model allows 

for a more iterative style of deployment, supporting fast iterations, 

which are a requirement for the delivery of Software as a 

Service (SaaS) applications. When you don’t have to arrange for 

new machines and software stacks ahead of time, the IT staff is 

free to think differently about how quickly they can roll out new 

versions of applications and meet the needs of the business. 

As end-users increasingly consume SaaS, PaaS supports the 

need to continuously deliver new features. PaaS makes sure the 

infrastructure supports you as you make these changes and 

roll them out, allowing you to focus on the application itself. 

Some of the key advantages of PaaS are as follows: 

✓ Immediate access to pre-configured and optimized runtime 

environment: You don’t need to tend to the setup 

of your environment. This eliminates many time consuming 

concerns for the deployment staff related to the operating 

system, hardware selection and compatibility. 

✓ Simplified application deployment process: Don’t wait 

for IT intervention for the initial deployment — deploy 

additional versions of the app for preview, testing, or 

evaluation without additional IT resources. IT is freed to 

focus on other more critical IT issues. 

✓ High availability, scalability, firewall, and networking: 

These areas are part of the PaaS environment. You don’t 

need to be concerned about setup and configuration of 

these capabilities. 

✓ System maintenance: The PaaS provider is responsible for 

system maintenance. You don’t have to maintain the hardware, 

operating system, or the complex software stacks 

needed to support the application runtime environment.




The ease of use that you get from PaaS can have a downside 

depending on your requirements. What is the tradeoff Your 

PaaS provider needs to make some assumptions in order to 

provide you with easy access to a pre-integrated runtime environment. 

For example, your environment may include JBoss, 

Tomcat, and Java. If you work for a time with the PaaS provider’s 

pre-integrated environment and then your requirements 

change, you may be locked-in. 

In the case of an Open PaaS (see Chapter 2 for more details 

on Open PaaS), your application is typically quite portable, 

but you develop a dependency on the operational characteristics 

of the particular PaaS provider — after all, operational 

efficiency is a key reason to use PaaS. There may be an operational 

cost to move away from a particular vendor’s PaaS environment. 

You may want to consider an Open PaaS to minimize 

vendor lock-in. Standards are evolving to further help in PaaS 

interoperability, and you should be aware of your PaaS vendor’s 

commitment to standards. 

The Role of Continuous Delivery 

Smart IT organizations understand that development and 

deployment must be based on a lifecycle process. An application 

isn’t developed once and then deployed. The applications 

that operate innovative businesses have to evolve. These 

changes may be both a consequence of changing business 

models as well as changing technology options. 

The goal of continuous delivery is to reduce the time to move 

from development to production by continually iterating on code 

while keeping the product in a high-quality, working state. Then, 

as soon as some meaningful piece of new code is written and 

tested, it’s released into the production environment. When the 

business provides feedback, including new functions or pointing 

out unanticipated issues, changes can be made immediately and 

rolled out. The underlying structure and abstractions that are 

foundational to PaaS help ensure that applications can be built, 

deployed, tested, and managed in a highly iterative manner. With 

PaaS you can make the choice to deliver incremental change in a 

continuous cycle or to deliver changes in a coordinated release. 

Either way you can use PaaS to deliver these changes easier and 

faster and for competitive advantage.



38 


In order to deliver on these advantages and make sure you 

get the competitive advantage you expect by moving to PaaS, 

your provider should answer the following questions: 

✓ How do you integrate continuous integration and the overall 

application lifecycle management across the PaaS 

✓ How will you ensure that my web application can scale 

How will you guarantee that my web application can take 

on an unanticipated increased load and still perform 

✓ What’s your solution for auto scaling and high availability 

✓ If one of your machines goes down, how will you ensure 

that end-user experience is uninterrupted and remains 

consistent 

✓ What’s your plan for disaster recovery Do you support 

running in multiple regions so my application will automatically 

be supported in an alternative region if my base 

region is struck by a disaster 

✓ How easy is it to use my favorite development frameworks 

during development, testing, and in production 

using the PaaS The PaaS may provide “native” support 

for some frameworks, but in any case, if not, needs to 

make it possible for you to use and make updates to the 

frameworks yourself. How do I coordinate updates of 

frameworks across multiple applications as both frameworks 

and applications evolve 

Understanding PaaS Services 

for Deployment 

The PaaS provider becomes your first line of defense when it 

comes to deployment and operational issues. Most PaaS providers 

have a dashboard for visualizing overall systems performance. 

You can use this tool to monitor whether your PaaS 

provider is up or down and is meeting its service level agreements 

(SLAs). Ideally, in a hybrid environment, you should 

look for a dashboard that gives you uniform visibility across 

your own resources and those of your PaaS provider. 

Some of the most important deployment services are covered 

in this section.




Monitoring and notification services 

All aspects of the PaaS environment that may impact end-user 

performance need to be monitored. Security issues should be 

given the utmost attention by your PaaS environment. 

Your runtime environment needs as much security and 

protection as your development environment to support 

customer and suppliers. In order to monitor security, your 

PaaS provider (or the underlying IaaS provider) needs to scan 

networks, operating systems, and applications in order to 

prevent intrusion or denial of service attacks. In addition, you 

need to have sufficient insight into the monitoring capabilities 

to satisfy audit requirements. 

Load balancing and secure 

connection services 

Your PaaS provider needs to ensure that the load balancing 

service adequately supports your end-users regardless 

of how they access your application (desktop, mobile). You 

want assurance that your end-users are always routed over a 

secure channel to a live endpoint. 

Data management services 

Users of PaaS services need to trust that their provider maintains 

all service level agreements related to scalability and 

isolation of their data. Be confident that all requests for larger 

or additional instances, as well as any updates to your data, 

are isolated and visible only to you. The PaaS needs to provide 

you with the ability to share data among your own ecosystem 

(say, between your own applications) in addition to 

supporting isolation of the data from other tenants. 

Integrating with Existing 

Systems and Services 

The reality is that enterprises have substantial investments in 

existing services. Therefore, ensure that your PaaS provider



40 


makes it easy to integrate services deployed in the PaaS environment 

with services running in your data center. Before 

choosing a PaaS vendor, make sure it can support the applications 

and services you need to integrate together. 

With an application in the cloud, you have many points of 

integration: 

✓ The application may integrate with a CRM application in 

your organization. 

✓ The application may integrate with other services in 

the cloud. 

✓ Enterprises that have invested in designing infrastructure 

with a service-oriented approach will be in the best position 

to integrate internal services with cloud services. 

✓ Enterprises that have focused on taking existing infrastructure 

and wrapping key components so they can be 

exposed as services are ready to begin to integrate service 

in a hybrid environment. 

In order to make all this happen, the PaaS provider must have 

well-documented and well-defined interfaces for you to use. 

In other words, at the center of integration capabilities 

between applications in the cloud or on-premises are 

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). These APIs, 

which are part of the PaaS platform, enable companies to 

quickly integrate their services into a wide variety of applications 

on a diverse set of platforms.



Chapter 5 

Ten Steps to Take 

toward PaaS 


▶ Assessing your current computing environment 

▶ Educating yourself and others on PaaS 

▶ Knowing the PaaS requirements 

▶ Having the proper team and organization 

Part of your journey to leveraging Platform as a Service 

(PaaS) requires taking a step back and planning. To think 

through your approach to PaaS, we share ten steps that help 

you get started. 

Step 1: Get a Handle on Your 

Current Computing Environment 

Before you can plan your future you have to understand your 

past and current situations. Ask yourself these questions: 

✓ What type of computing environment do you currently 

have 

✓ How well does it support your existing business needs, 

and how well will it support change 

✓ What business are you in 

✓ Are you in a position to sell services to your customers 

and partners 

✓ Do you have a structure that allows you to move quickly



42 


By understanding where you are and what’s working, you can 

understand what you need for the future. 

Step 2: Educate Yourself 

on the Value of PaaS 

If you’re thinking about PaaS, you probably have some experience 

with cloud computing. But now you’re ready to move to 

the next phase with your cloud journey. You want to create new 

innovations that help your organization be more competitive. 

It is tempting to simply jump in and start buying tools and 

technology to use with your Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) 

environment. But before you jump, take a look at these tips: 

✓ Educate yourself on your options (check out Chapter 2 

for the different kinds of PaaS). 

✓ Get familiar with the different vendor offerings for PaaS. 

✓ Understand how each platform works and what skills 

you’ll have to learn. 

Step 3: Experiment 

with the Options 

Many companies don’t have direct experience with PaaS and 

may make decisions without the knowledge necessary to 

avoid pitfalls. One of the benefits of the cloud model is that 

you can experiment with commercial offerings on the market 

without spending cash. Many of the vendors allow developers 

to try before they buy. So, take the time to experiment. 

For example, some PaaS offerings are tied to a specific 

Software as a Service (SaaS) model. You may want to link your 

new development efforts to that SaaS offering if that SaaS environment 

is the foundation of the value you offer to customers. 

In some situations, you may want to keep PaaS separate from 

the SaaS environment. With some experimentation, you’ll get 

a good idea of what it means to use a PaaS environment.



Chapter 5: Ten Steps to Take toward PaaS 43 

Step 4: Figure Out What 

Your Requirements Are 

Create a set of requirements with consideration for pop-up 

concerns: 

✓ What language do you prefer to work with 

✓ How much abstraction do you need 

✓ Do you want a platform that automates many of the routine 

tasks in both development and deployment 

✓ What type of middleware is already in use and what middleware 

services do you need 

✓ How much integration do you need to do with other 

public or private environments 

Getting the answers to these questions makes your selection 

process a lot easier. 

Step 5: Put Together 

an Evaluation Team 

A PaaS environment can have a dramatic change in how your 

organization develops software, so you don’t want to make 

a decision on your own. A PaaS environment touches many 

parts of the business, so put together a team that represents 

all the key constituents and stakeholders to include representatives 

from development, quality assurance, and operations. 

Step 6: Conduct a Pilot Project 

Identify a project that’s well-defined and can show the development 

and operations team how well PaaS supports the development 

of a business project. You may want to try several PaaS 

environments so you can experience different approaches.



44 


Step 7: Plan a Well-Designed 

Organizational Structure 

Technology is only as good as how well the organization is 

prepared to use it. Change is difficult and many developers 

and operational personnel may be resistant to trying a new 

approach. Educate your team on both cloud computing itself 

and the benefits of a PaaS environment. 

Many IT professionals are concerned that cloud environments 

may make their skills and knowledge obsolete. However, PaaS 

actually makes IT more effective in supporting the business. 

Step 8: Continuously Evaluate 

Emerging Standards 

Cloud computing as a commercial practice for companies is evolving, 

so you should continue to evaluate emerging standards and 

best practices. Embrace these approaches to remain competitive. 

Step 9: Embrace the Continuum 

of the Develop/Deploy Cycle 

Successful companies understand that after they develop 

and deploy an application through a PaaS environment that 

they aren’t finished. Applications are increasingly becoming 

dynamic. Cloud-based applications are continually being 

updated with the latest innovations. 

Step 10: Turn the Experience 

into a Strategy Roadmap 

Plot out a roadmap for what you’re going to put into practice 

over the next few years. If you took a peek at any of the steps 

before this section, use those steps as the beginning of your 

journey in planning. Don’t try to plan for ten years. A 3- to 5-year 

roadmap helps you construct a meaningful and realistic plan.

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