Platform as a Service (PaaS), as one of cloud computing models that simplify the development of business applications, has promised a number of businesses advantages, including higher productivity and uptime guarantee (Simplify Applications with PaaS). With such benefits offered by PaaS, more companies are looking for the PaaS providers. Finding the right provider, however, could be a nerve-wrecking process.
Although many PaaS providers have proven ability in the market, not all of them could meet your business’s needs. Financial viability is one of several concerns in seeking the potential provider considering that if there’s any dependency involved and the vendor is going out of business or being acquired by a company, they will probably discontinue support of the platform that your company use.
To deploy an effective PaaS service, companies should find the right provider based on Containership by Phil Dougherty:
- Determine your business’s requirements
Knowing that you already found the right PaaS is when the provider candidate could answer questions that could fulfill your business’s requirements, such as do they support the programming languages you need? Do they support your required application frameworks? Do they provide backup, restore and disaster recovery services?
- Determine what services and technologies the PaaS providers offer
The second thing to consider before choosing PaaS provider is that they could explain the services and technologies they provide. To make sure, you should ask questions, such as how many stacks and stack combinations do they offer? How many languages? Which ones? Some PaaS providers use a particular programming language such as Java, Ruby, or Python.
- Evaluate the PaaS graphical control panel or its command line
You do not want your team to do extra training just to operate the PaaS or you do not want your developers wasting their time just trying to figure out how to carry out a few simple tasks. Therefore, before deciding provider, you should make sure that the PaaS graphical control panel and its command line is easy to understand and easy to use. Also, make sure that the screens and controls are logical and intuitive to use.
- Look at the PaaS’s ecosystem. How rich is it?
Having common environments with your PaaS provider will make integration easier and faster. You should know who are their software providers, their partners and their developers? How familiar and comfortable with them are you?
- What security precautions do they take?
PaaS is now common and accepted, but that does not mean anybody should take security for granted. Every PaaS provider should protect your data and applications with the best security tools available. Remember that when your PaaS goes down, so do you applications. Ask around to your PaaS provider, and find out how is their reputation for customer service?
It is important for companies to test prospective providers to ensure the offered services meet their businesses or technical requirements, such as supported languages and service availability. CTI Group as your IT solution partner will guide you in finding the right PaaS provider from trustworthy brands namely IBM Bluemix and Helios Cloud based on your business needs and goals so you can focus on delivering the best result of your business applications.
