Platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) are two kinds of cloud computing products that enable businesses and their clients to deliver and use various services, respectively. Before diving into the differences between the two concepts, it’s important to take a step back and understand what a cloud service really is.
Cloud computing primarily refers to large storage of data, programs, and operations that are accessible via the Internet and are not stored on a user’s computer. These on-demand services are stored in the “cloud,” which is managed and maintained by the company providing cloud computing services. Businesses can greatly benefit from using cloud computing, as it frequently cuts the expenses of buying and installing software. It’s also more efficient to develop your software with the help of a cloud platform.
Besides, providing your software in the form that’s accessible from your customer’s phone, tablet, laptop, smartwatch, and any other device that can connect to the Internet is vital. It’s simply becoming increasingly more convenient and time-efficient to distribute software over the web. Investing in PaaS or SaaS development services, depending on your company’s needs, can be incredibly beneficial and profitable for your business in the long run.
The Main Features of PaaS
Platform as a service is a more expansive type of cloud product that presents a whole platform instead of a single application to satisfy a customer’s needs. A PaaS product typically consists of various software development tools distributed together over the Internet. The provider of the PaaS product usually delivers both the hardware and software, such as the necessary development toolkit, operational systems, the access to the hardware required to run the application, and so on. The user does not have to design and implement their infrastructure since the provider hosts all the tools on their premises and servers.
Platform as a service can be useful not only for programmers but for people who need an application but lack the means and experience to build it. PaaS resources can be compared to graphical development tools incorporated in many development environments: a programmer can write XML code from scratch, but it’s faster to drag a pre-programmed button on the screen. Likewise, PaaS removes the responsibility of maintaining or upgrading the infrastructure that an app runs on from the programmer. The developer simply needs to rent the resources that already possess the capacity to resolve such issues.
Some examples of PaaS include Windows Azure, Google App Engine, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Heroku, Cloud Foundry, CloudBees, and IBM SmartCloud. All of these services aim to increase their customers’ productivity and ensure that the development and deployment of their applications go smoothly.
The Main Features of SaaS
Software as a service is the most widespread form of cloud services. It represents a fully functional and ready-to-use virtual environment that allows users to do tasks, which that particular SaaS was designed for. SaaS usually has a well-developed, intuitive, and convenient user interface. In comparison with PaaS, software as a service requires less input from the user, allowing the person to achieve their objective even faster and easier.
SaaS products that aim to help people create applications and websites normally have a highly customizable front-end and templates that remove the necessity to design these elements by hand. Also, an individual will find that very little to no coding is required to create the back-end functionality. SaaS for software development can enable companies to create prototypes of applications without wasting resources.
Also, SaaS products have an indisputable benefit of being accessible from anywhere. For instance, word processing software that requires installation limits its user to working on a single computer where it is installed. Uploading the necessary documents to the cloud and subsequently downloading them to work on another machine is too much of a hassle for most users. A SaaS application allows a user to access the same document on any device that has Internet access. This convenience often plays a major role in the customer’s decision to use a particular piece of software.
The most well-known examples of SaaS include Google Apps, QuickBooks, Citrix GoToMeeting, Slack, Cisco WebEx, Google Docs, TurboTax, Concur, Dropbox, Hubspot, BigCommerce, and Salesforce.
What Are the Key Differences Between PaaS and SaaS?
Overall, PaaS is one of the quickest and easiest ways to develop and launch an application. It allows the programmer to dodge the troubles of creating and managing the infrastructure required for the proper operation of their application. SaaS takes the automatization to the next level and offers many customizable features that the user doesn’t need to code by hand. At the same time, SaaS grants less control over the application to the developer than PaaS does, similarly to how restricting the use of PaaS is compared to setting everything up from scratch.
Also, SaaS includes numerous more basic applications, such as Google Docs, for users who don’t need the functionality of a PaaS product. SaaS applications are more advanced, convenient, and multi-purposeful than their PaaS counterparts. They trade customers’ flexibility for ease of use, only requiring a person to utilize the service instead of developing it.
When choosing between SaaS and PaaS, businesses should assess their needs carefully. For most companies that are not specialized in software development, SaaS will be the best option, since it ensures rapid launch, stable functioning controlled by the cloud computing provider, and nearly unlimited hardware and software capacity for a reasonable price.
Wrapping Up
Both SaaS and PaaS are cloud-based types of services with the primary goal of optimizing the customers’ workflow and improving their user experience. SaaS is the most popular kind of cloud computing product. It represents software applications that anyone can use without customization. PaaS, on the other hand, is designed to grant more control to the user and remove the distracting factors, such as the infrastructure needed for the deployment of an application.
The main difference between the two is the amount of management and intervention that a user can do. Although it might take some time to accurately evaluate which type of service your company needs, the decision to move to the cloud will be undoubtedly rewarding.
