Working with cloud infrastructures is a hot topic today and just like the climate, it doesn’t seem like the interest will cool down soon. Forbes predicts that the number of companies moving from on-premise data centres to the public cloud will continue to grow in the following years. Microsoft, for example, showed double-digit growth in adoption numbers of their Azure platform, and expects this to continue in the future.
In our experience, migrations toward the public cloud generally follow a fixed pattern. On-premise functionality is usually first replaced with a popular Software as a Service (SaaS) package. Examples include Office 365 for collaboration and Salesforce for customer management. In the next phase, companies move workloads from a data centre to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure.
Most companies have attained this level of cloud maturity, often referred to as a lift and shift migration, and stop there. However, we are convinced that companies should take it a step further.
From IaaS to PaaS
Taking the steps mentioned above will not suffice to make you stand out as a company. Quite the opposite: adopting a SaaS platform is often done precisely because it is an area where it is difficult to distinguish yourself from the pack. Sure, moving to IaaS often results in a lower TCO and higher operational reliability, but that’s pretty much all it does.
Taking it to the next level and actually having the cloud infrastructure benefit your business growth requires moving to a Platform as a Service (PaaS). For most companies, this is still uncharted territory and therefore daunting. Let’s take a closer look to familiarise ourselves.
Platforms as a Plus
Here’s the fact of the matter: most companies only need IT infrastructure to run and build applications. Unless you are a hosting company or a cloud provider, your infrastructure itself provides no business value.
So why not ease yourself of the worries typically associated with infrastructure maintenance? Why not let your organisation focus on what it does best instead: developing the applications that provide value to your customers, both internal and external? This is where PaaS and its cloud-native apps really shine.
