PaaS Comes With Distinct Responsibilities
Platform-as-a-Service is where the most complex work in the cloud is happening. Increasingly mission-critical applications are being ported to the cloud, bringing emphasis back to basic principles of computer science and software engineering. In many cases, operators may only be interested in getting the application up and running, but shortcuts taken in early stages will cause major problems if the application is to expand later and connect to others – many of whom may be residing in clouds belonging to customers, clients and maybe competitors.
The importance of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) cannot be over-emphasized. Implementation will lead to applications that are well-governed, shared, able to expand and language-independent. Such an application stack will also be stable and more secure, with SOA ensuring no silos are created. Silos lead to wasted effort, duplication of data and restricted growth. Good governance of cloud apps is important because:
- Using Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) means well-made application programs made by professionals. However, on the PaaS model, there is scope for improperly constructed applications.
- Following the PaaS model, you get a ready-to-use server platform of the configuration you want. After hiring such an instance, you still need to create programs used on this platform.
- With a large number of tools being available, creating applications that reside on platforms hired on cloud is becoming easy. Just as a large number of visual programming languages created a breed of amateur programmers who could automate basic tasks with ease, it is becoming possible to create programs for use in the cloud that would perform most common functions with ease. Hiring of servers with specified configurations is not difficult and we are beginning to see many applications that do not follow strict rules of cloud-based application engineering and SOA.
Another important issue is the calculation of Return on Investment (ROI). Once again, the PaaS model gives you certain responsibilities in this regard. Using the SaaS model, however, will give you fairly well-documented ROI figures. This needs to be calculated for PaaS application stacks. You would use Platform as a Service only if existing applications do not meet your requirements. Therefore you are faced with the problem of calculating the ROI of niche programs.
Cloud ROI is composed of 3 major benefit areas:
- Cost Reduction
- Productivity Enhancement
- Revenue Transformation
Cost reduction - In a typical case, the transition to a cloud resulted in the reduction of servers from 82 to 11. Racks reduced from 11 to 1, there were 50% savings in capital expenditure and 80% savings in operating expenditure. There is an immediate reduction in savings on personnel, which can be huge as more than two thirds of a typical IT budget is typically spent on manpower. There are significant savings in power and cooling requirements as well.
Productivity enhancement – The cloud gives far greater stability compared to on-premise hosted systems. An extreme example was provided in the case of super storm Sandy. While traditional, on-premise systems in affected areas had to shut down leading to major revenue-loss, cloud-based systems merely shifted their entire application stacks to data centers in other zones and continued operations normally.
Revenue transformation – Prior to cloud computing, most of your IT expenditure (less manpower costs) was capital expenditure. In the cloud model, this is generally operating expenditure. The pay-as-you-go model fits very well in the operating expenditure mold.
PaaS gives you the flexibility to create applications that fit your niche area perfectly. Calculation of RoI is critical in the governance of your PaaS application stack, bringing a more structured approach to writing applications.
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About the Guest Author:
Sanjay Srivastava has been active in computing infrastructure and has participated in major projects on cloud computing, networking, VoIP and in creation of applications running over distributed databases. Due to a military background, his focus has always been on stability and availability of infrastructure. Sanjay was the Director of Information Technology in a major enterprise and managed the transition from legacy software to fully networked operations using private cloud infrastructure. He now writes extensively on cloud computing and networking and is about to move to his farm in Central India where he plans to use cloud computing and modern technology to improve the lives of rural folk in India.
