Table of Contents for

Programming for PaaS

If you can easily move your application from one PaaS vendor to another, both are portable PaaS options. A PaaS that can run code largely unchanged from normal development processes is portable. For example, if the PaaS supports PHP and you can upload a WordPress PHP application without changing the fundamental code behind WordPress, this is a portable PaaS.

A PaaS that is bound to proprietary APIs that make it difficult to move to other PaaS vendors is non-portable.

Any PaaS that works on public clouds like AWS and Rackspace is a public cloud PaaS.

Any PaaS that works behind firewalls and on your own infrastructure is a private cloud PaaS.

A managed PaaS is a PaaS that you do not need to operate; you use it as a service.

An unmanaged PaaS is a PaaS that needs to be set up, secured, maintained, operated, and updated manually.

AppFog—now owned by CenturyLink—was one of the first providers of first-class PHP support in PaaS. It has since grown in popularity and expanded to support Node.js, Ruby, Python, and Java solutions.

Apprenda focuses on deep .NET and Java support and integration for enterprise PaaS adoption behind the firewall. It helps with adding SaaS enablement to regular .NET and Java applications.

CloudBees started as a Java-only PaaS that incorporated common tools used within Java platforms. It has since expanded to support many more languages including Node.js, Go, and Erlang and others. CloudBees also has fantastic Jenkins integration for continuous integration.

Cloud Foundry offers a set of more than a dozen programs that are loosely coupled and work together to provide PaaS functionality.

DotCloud was the first PaaS to support multiple languages and technologies. It supports Ruby, Node.js, Python, PHP, and Java.

EngineYard was one of the first PaaS companies and has thousands of production customers. It supports Ruby, PHP, and Node. Developers get full root access to their dedicated virtual servers and the flexibility of custom Chef recipes to control and automate their entire environment, regardless of size. EngineYard’s highly regarded DevOps and support team has expertise in application analysis, code and security audits, custom Chef, deployment, scaling, and high availability strategies.

Force.com is SalesForce’s proprietary PaaS for accessing SalesForce data directly. It has been able to create an ecosystem of applications around CRM data.

Google App Engine was one of the very earliest forms of PaaS, with a large following and a large developer mindshare behind it. Its promise to take advantage of the power of Google has helped to make it a leader in PaaS.

Google App Engine started out as a non-portable PaaS but is moving toward portability and can even run WordPress applications with the addition of PHP support.

Heroku was one of the first cloud platforms. It supports Ruby, Java, Python, Clojure, Scala, Node.js, and other languages.

Azure started out as non-portable but has been moving slowly toward portability. Microsoft also provides standard services that can scale independently.

AWS currently is the most popular IaaS in use. Amazon uses Xen to virtualize its infrastructure across more than a dozen availability zones around the world.

DataPipe offers its own infrastructure, as well as reselling Amazon Web Services with more managed services on top. The extra services include monitoring, patching, change management, deployment, and more.

GoGrid is a high-performance IaaS managed hosting provider.

Google has built its IaaS service to compete with Amazon and others. The performance is significantly higher than Amazon’s at the same price point.

HP Cloud is a relatively new IaaS offering in the market. It is a public cloud built on OpenStack technology running in various HP data centers around the world.

Joyent is an IaaS provider targeting large enterprises. Instead of virtualizing the OS like most traditional IaaS providers, Joyent uses its SmartOS technology (based on Solaris), which combines ZFS, DTrace, Zones, and KVM and has better performance characteristics than traditional virtualization.

OpenStack is an open source library made up of various components that aims to simulate the API experience of IaaS providers like AWS.

The components of OpenStack currently include:

Rackspace is a provider of fanatical support for managed hosting of both Linux and Windows. Rackspace worked with NASA to originally sponsor the OpenStack project and has incorporated OpenStack to run its public cloud IaaS today.

Savvis (now owned by CenturyLink) is a large enterprise−focused provider of VMware-based public cloud IaaS with the option of managed services. The servers run by Savvis can be completely managed and software upgraded by Savvis if you like.

TerreMark (now owned by Verizon) is another large enterprise−focused VMware-based public cloud IaaS that is sold in blocks of resources as opposed to virtual machine instances.

Although Azure started out as a PaaS application, it has expanded into IaaS capabilities. The Windows support is fantastic, and it even has support for Linux. However, the Linux support is currently limited to 20 virtual machines within a subnet, so it may not be as scalable as other providers in this list for Linux.