If you're looking to create new software for your business, there are a range of tools available to help with this. One popular option over the last few years has been cloud-based Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). However, this is increasingly being challenged by another emerging technology known as serverless computing.
Each offers their own benefits when it comes to making coding as streamlined and responsive as possible, but the two tools aren't interchangeable.
Here’s what you need to know about each of these tools when it comes to making a decision between them and identifying which will be best for your business.
PaaS is a cloud-based service that provides your business with all the computing resources you need to develop applications quickly and easily. Put simply, the operating system (OS) is run and managed by your service provider and you create the app to run on it - you don’t have to update the OS or make sure it’s stable and running. Examples include the popular Google App Engine.
They offer services such as virtual servers, storage, network infrastructure and system management. It also provides middleware, BI services and database organization. This frees you up to focus on your business and helps you deploy your newly developed apps quickly and efficiently.
PaaS offers a number of key benefits over traditional platforms for software development. These include:
Serverless technology is designed to remove or reduce the need for management and configuration requirements from your development workflow. You simply write the individual functions and deploy them straight away, without any added infrastructure building or software work. Some people have described it as the next logical progression from IaaS and PaaS.
These solutions come in two main offerings - Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) and Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS). Of these, FaaS is the most widely used solution as it offers high scalability and a great deal of choice for developers.
With FaaS, users are able to execute code in stateless containers, according to predefined events. This provides developers with a platform to easily develop and deploy code as it functions without having to deal with any infrastructure configurations.
BaaS, meanwhile, enables developers to focus only on the frontend, with most backend functionalities, including hosting, database management and authentications, handled by the cloud provider. In this form of serverless computing, an API or a software development kit is needed to act as the bridge between the user-managed frontend and the backend services.