NC Nov-Dec 2021

OPINION: PAAS
FROM NAAS TO PAAS
NEIL TEMPLETON, VICE PRESIDENT, DIGITAL INNOVATION
MARKETING, EXPLORES HOW NETWORK-AS-A-SERVICE CAN
UNLOCK THE VALUE OF PLATFORM-AS-A-SERVICE
The widespread adoption of the
cloud has transformed the way
applications are developed, just as
much as it has transformed the way they
are deployed and consumed.
Cloud platform services, also known as
Platform as a Service (PaaS), is a
complete development and deployment
environment in the cloud. PaaS has
resources that enable developers to
deliver everything from simple cloudbased
apps to sophisticated, cloudenabled
enterprise applications. All
servers, storage, and networking can be
managed by the enterprise or a thirdparty
provider while the developers can
maintain management of the
applications.
No matter the size of the company,
using PaaS offers numerous advantages,
from its scalability through to its simple
and cost effect deployment. But, together
with Network-as-a-Service (NaaS),
developers can support the complete
application lifecycle by unlocking the
value of PaaS.
ANYTHING-AS-A-SERVICE
The three key benefits of a cloud
environment - flexibility, scalability, and
speed - extend quite nicely to app
development and have helped
developers perpetuate transformative
ways of working through concepts such
as Agile and DevOps.
It's becoming an enterprise trend.
Although SaaS (Software-as-a-Service)
will retain the lion’s share of cloud
infrastructure spend for the next several
years, Gartner expects application
infrastructure services, or PaaS, to grow
by a higher margin through 2021, at
26.6% compared to 16% for SaaS.
This is evidence of adoption trends
moving down the infrastructure stack -
from where they started out, with
consumption of apps, to the creation of
apps. It's a trend that is somewhat
influenced by the pandemic as
enterprises have accelerated digital
transformation plans, ingesting and
expelling almost everything 'as-aservice'.
According to Deloitte, the boost that
XaaS (Anything-as-a-Service) can give to
innovation is wide-ranging, with 80% of
businesses agreeing that adoption of XaaS
has led their organisation to reinvent
business processes, develop new
products/services, invent a new business
model, and even change how they sell to
customers.
To break that down; we've seen how
SaaS has changed the way organisations
consume services; we've seen how IaaS
changes the way companies deploy
software; and PaaS is changing how
software is developed. The next natural
innovation in as-a-Service has to be in
connectivity.
As we have seen with the consumption
and deployment of cloud apps, until the
appearance of NaaS, connectivity was
one of the main stumbling blocks to
maximising cloud value. Simply put, the
historically cumbersome method of
procuring and consuming network
connectivity was out of sync with the
promise of the cloud.
22 NETWORKcomputing NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 @NCMagAndAwards
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