Do you pride yourself on your knowledge of modern application development? I did… and always thought I kept my skills current. Recently, however, I discovered I was way, way behind. It shocked me. Platform-As-A-Service (PaaS) is a significantly different approach to custom application development. It kicks n-tier to the curb, and I love it.
When I was cool, applications were built in three tiers (UI, Logic, DB). It was all custom code with maybe some widgets or libraries for complex functionality. The entire application was usually expected to run on a single server, and we developed the system in a slow, waterfall approach.
Now, the entire application is a series of services. Developers pick and choose the modules they need to achieve a specific goal. You don’t know where your application is running. There are many business benefits to this approach:
Now, the entire application is a series of services. Developers pick and choose the modules they need to achieve a specific goal. You don’t know where your application is running.
There are many business benefits to this approach:
- Pace of innovation is accelerated. Thanks to on-demand, cloud models, we can instantly provision and connect to services. I saw a developer create a full sentiment analysis application in less than an hour using PaaS.
- Lifecycle management is completely different because as the application can and will change as new services are made available by vendors.
- DevOps models simplify when the platform is cloud-based; there is less code to deploy and no servers to maintain, patch, and support.
- Quality improves when most of the code is reusable services assembled with minimal customization. Testers can focus on scenarios and business risk.
My world has been rocked and it is awesome.