by John T. Connelly, BusinessReviewCanada

2. Platform-as-a-service (Paas)

A natural evolution of Software-as-a-service, Paas enables the creation of the most specialized form of web software applications in that each element is design by an organization to serve that organization’s needs. Traditionally, designing web applications required a team of specialists with knowledge of and the ability to integrate an operating system, a web server, a database and a programming language. Such a highly skilled and synergistic in-house endeavor proved costly.

Paas offers business an integrated environment to create applications to meet unique needs via a solution stack, which bundles the operating system, web server, database and programming language. Staying true to the pay-as-you-go appeal of cloud computing, Paas eliminates costly initial investments and provides a blank canvas for the design, testing and deployment of the application. While Google App Engine, Windows Azure and Amazon EC2 offer paas, smaller ISVs like Commensus and Heroku are starting to make noise. The market remains up for grabs, though.