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These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. 8 Platform as a Service For Dummies, Special Edition 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.
These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. Chapter 1: Setting the Fundamentals of the Cloud 9 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:
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