Cloud computing tools have been a central part of many businesses' IT strategies for several years. But despite this, there are still a large number of firms that have yet to fully embrace this technology.
While the benefits of these systems in terms of flexibility, cost-effectiveness and ease of use are clear, making a migration is still a complex procedure. From determining which types of cloud solutions will be most beneficial for you to ensuring the deployment phase goes without a hitch, there's a lot for your IT team to think about.
One increasingly common cloud solution is Platform-as-a-Service, or PaaS. This is can have a range of benefits for enterprises as it gives IT pros such as developers everything they need to build applications, including operating systems, software updates, storage and infrastructure.
The fact users won't have to build up these resources from scratch can greatly reduce development time and complexity, while the scalability they provide is invaluable. This allows IT pros to focus more of their efforts on the creative side of their work without having to worry about more administrative tasks.
But with a wide range of PaaS solutions competing for attention from businesses, how should you go about selecting the right one?
There's no single best solution that will be useful for every firm's needs. Any PaaS deployment should consider the technical features and limitations of the tools to ensure they can provide all the correct functionality to make life easy for developers.
However, there are also a wide range of other questions that businesses must answer before committing to an agreement with a PaaS supplier. Here are a few key things to bear in mind before making a decision.
Scalability should be a key factor for any PaaS solution, but it's important you understand exactly how this is achieved. For example, is the provider able to automatically scale up (add more resources) or scale out (add more systems) as demand rises, or will this need to be initiated by the customer? Also, ask what effect, if any, this will have on performance, especially if there’s an unexpected increase in demand.