How Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) Helps Your Enterprise Scale

What is PaaS?
How PaaS benefits scalability
Further benefits with Spryker’s PaaS+

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Some things are better outsourced. Why sweat the small stuff when your team can focus on what really matters: creating the best possible product for your customers? Time and again, history has shown that outsourcing unnecessary responsibilities allows staff to focus on important tasks elsewhere.

Outsourcing as a practice was seen in action between 1890 and 1920, when electrification swept the US. With electrical power having recently been made available from reliable and cheaper centralized sources, companies and factories were no longer reliant on in-house generators to ensure the lights stayed on. As businesses ceased to consider this their responsibility, physical space where generators once stood was put to better use and staff time could be better utilized.

By this same token, cloud computing is helping companies further harness the efforts of their workforce. As technology use increases, more strain is placed on IT teams and on-site facilities to meet demand. Many companies have turned to cloud computing to overcome this.

Just as electrification offered cheaper and more reliable power, cloud computing offers cost-effective and almost unlimited IT resources without the need for on-site maintenance.

Just like clouds themselves, cloud computing models come in different shapes and sizes. For enterprises, the most common solution is Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).

But what is PaaS, and how can Spryker’s PaaS+ service benefit your business’s scalability?

What is PaaS?

PaaS is a cloud computing model which offloads numerous responsibilities from your company to the vendor. In this case, the vendor provides:

• Servers
• Storage
• Networking
• Virtualization
• Middleware
• Operating system
• Runtime

This leaves your business to provide only:

• Data
• Applications

Comparing this to other cloud models, such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), PaaS provides a sweet spot between access to necessary computing power alongside adequate customization, accessible and workable to any developer.

In comparison, an IaaS solution will offer more customization but require a more costly system administrator to run it. Opt for SaaS and you’ll need a low level of technical support, but very little customization will be available.

As well as offering the cost-effective benefits above, PaaS is known for its scalability, an incredibly important aspect of modern business.

How PaaS benefits scalability

Scalabilty refers to the ability of a business to reactively change in size according to need or demand. This is important in modern business to easily ramp up operations at key moments.

By offering virtualized resources, PaaS allows for scalability in a number of areas:

1. Provides responsive computing power

   With PaaS setups, you only pay for the computer power you use and can add or remove capacity as needed. Compared to an on-premise solution, where physical servers must be installed and maintained to allow additional resources, this offers much easier elasticity in scalability.

2. Frees up employee time to focus on scaling business

   In the PaaS model, developers no longer need to focus on the underlying infrastructure that allows them to code, offering them the ability to focus purely on the code itself. It eliminates the need to build and maintain many aspects of on-premise solutions, allowing maximized efficiency in their developer roles.

3. Allows a wider net of potential employees

   Staff can access PaaS services from anywhere, meaning employee hiring can take place from anywhere too. As PaaS services can be utilized by developers, more scarce system administrators are also not necessary. In a market as highly competitive as tech, with large deficits in much-needed talent, this widens the potential pool of employees massively, helping your team, and company, scale.

Although PaaS is a cloud approach, it’s also a product offered by Spryker. Spryker’s PaaS offers the scalability benefits listed above, along with other advantages.

Spryker will also soon release their latest PaaS offering: PaaS+.

Further scalability benefits with Spryker’s PaaS+

PaaS+ from Spryker is an extension of Spryker’s regular PaaS product, allowing companies to further offset responsibilities from in-house teams onto Spryker. By shifting responsibilities, PaaS+ further enables organisations to scale.

PaaS+ offers two processes which benefit the scalability of business:

1. Code quality checks

   PaaS+ offers a new quality gateway, which evaluates and ensures the quality of new code. New code must follow best practices and patterns as mandated by Spryker before it is upgraded into a platform. If code is deemed non-compliant, suggested improvements are offered in an issue report. This benefits scalability by assisting developers in professional agility and efficiency.

2. Upgradability check

   Automated and semi-automated upgrades are utilized via PaaS+, reducing organizational upgrade efforts. This allows tech staff further opportunity to focus only the tasks they really need to focus on, further allowing them to focus on helping your platform grow.

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Cloud computing is not just a “nice to have” but very much a “must have” in modern business, particularly when it comes to the ability to effectively scale. Choosing an efficient cloud platform is essential to ensure adequate scalability in a cost effective manner. Although PaaS is proven to help businesses benefit, PaaS+ from Spryker offers further benefits which offset additional responsibilities from your workforce. This reduction in tasks for in-house teams increases scalability by allowing developers to focus most effectively on the tasks they’re employed to carry out.

Interested in learning more about how PaaS+ can help your business scale? Speak to our Sales team now!