Why AWS, IBM, Microsoft, and Red Hat are leading the charge in PaaS innovation

• AWS, IBM, Microsoft, and Red Hat are readying platforms with microservices and serverless architectures.
• The leaders in this market are investing heavily in ecosystem partnerships to provide customers with broader access to advanced platform services.

As businesses began to focus on application development, the need arose for a cloud computing model that provided a complete platform for building, testing, and deploying applications. This transformation led to the emergence of Platform as a Service (PaaS), which has become essential for modern businesses. PaaS provides a cloud-based platform that allows companies to develop, test, and deploy their applications quickly and efficiently without expensive infrastructure or hardware.

According to market research, the global PaaS market is projected to grow from US$55.94 billion in 2022 to US$61.42 billion in 2023, indicating a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.8%. This growth is due to the rapid evolution of the PaaS market, which utilizes cutting-edge technologies such as integration/API, intelligent automation, observability/FinOps, and AI/ML, including generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT, to modernize new and existing applications.

The top PaaS providers: AWS, IBM, Microsoft, and Red Hat

According to GlobalData, AWS, IBM, Microsoft, and Red Hat are the best positioned to succeed in the current cloud era. These leaders are offering platforms with microservices and serverless architectures, low-code enabled intelligent automation platforms, and infrastructure-as-code tools to speed up app development/deployment and operational efficiencies.

Charlotte Dunlap, Research Director at GlobalData says, “Platforms support operational automation via cluster management solutions to facilitate the Kubernetes lifecycle management across various distributed scenarios, including edge, hybrid, and multi-cloud ecosystems. ChatGPT is already having an immediate impact among developers, especially newer coders, by eliminating baseline coding and speeding the digitization process.”

For example, IBM, among other major cloud providers like AWS and Azure, offers a range of PaaS and IaaS capabilities. IBM Cloud offers two primary PaaS options: IBM Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud and IBM Cloud Pak for Applications. The former is ideal for developing cloud-native applications and allows users to provision and scale workloads, and automate the update process.

With Red Hat OpenShift, IBM also offers the ability to deploy managed, highly available clusters with a single click. On the other hand, IBM Cloud Pak for Applications is designed to assist organizations in modernizing their existing applications.

The leaders in this market are also investing heavily in ecosystem partnerships to provide customers with broader access to advanced platform services. They are demonstrating solid strategies around application and platforms lifecycle management (APLM) solutions, leadership in promoting advanced technologies through OSS, and AI-injected services to support intelligent applications such as ML and natural language processing.

“Application platform vendors are challenged to take on public cloud leaders Microsoft, Amazon, and Google,” said Dunlap. “As such, they have made a concerted effort to build out ecosystems with those providers while continuing to differentiate through a comprehensive cloud stack which, alongside mature integration, API management, and analytics portfolios, includes infrastructure management capabilities (e.g., APLM) to ease app deployment.”

Low-code technology advancements coupled with a global IT skills shortage drive the need for AI-injected solutions to facilitate broader participation in the digital transformation efforts under a DevOps model. This trend responds to the need for enterprises to prioritize DevOps methodologies by leveraging a new wave of developer technologies that greatly eliminate barriers that impede the deployment of modern applications.

Dunlap predicts that technological advancements will lead to enterprises prioritizing DevOps methodologies through the adoption of a new wave of developer technologies that greatly remove barriers to deploying modern applications.

Benefits of PaaS

One of the most significant benefits of PaaS is that it allows businesses to focus on their core competencies without worrying about the underlying technology infrastructure. By taking care of the technical aspects of application development and deployment, PaaS allows businesses to concentrate on developing the applications that will drive their growth.

Another significant advantage of PaaS is its flexibility. PaaS allows businesses to customize their development environments to suit their specific needs, enabling them to build applications that meet their unique requirements. This flexibility allows businesses to respond quickly to changing market demands and stay ahead of the competition.

PaaS is a powerful technology that enables businesses to innovate and grow quickly and efficiently. By leveraging PaaS, businesses can take advantage of the latest technological advancements, focus on developing applications that meet their unique needs, reduce costs, and increase operational efficiency.

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