Lionel Sujay Vailshery
Research expert covering cloud computing and emerging tech industries
Platform as a Service (PaaS) - statistics & facts
Platform as a service empowers businesses to ditch IT infrastructure hassles and focus on innovation. Together with infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) is one of the three primary tiers of cloud computing. It allows businesses the opportunity to redirect resources away from IT hardware, software, and personnel expenses, toward other business needs. PaaS offerings are usually used in DevOps for mobile applications and cross-platform application development, and DevOps tools.
What does the PaaS model include?
In the PaaS model, the customer essentially buys everything they need to build an application from a cloud provider. Next to the services included in the IaaS model, such as virtualization, servers, storage, and networking, the PaaS model includes runtime, middleware, and operating systems. PaaS customers can focus solely on developing applications and managing data while the cloud service provider owns, operates, and maintains the infrastructure. In addition to decreasing the need for infrastructure management, PaaS solutions eliminate or automate maintenance tasks, allowing businesses to adopt new offerings and required technologies.
Global market forecast to grow
The overall cloud computing market is forecast to grow over the next few years, despite a slight decline in 2017. At the same time, the global market for public cloud services is expected to exceed 675 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. While PaaS accounts for about 20 percent of the overall cloud services market, the SaaS segment dominates most of it. In 2023, the public cloud PaaS market surpassed 145 billion U.S. dollars in revenue.
Major players in PaaS landscape
Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, IBM Cloud, and Google Cloud Platform are the major players in the global PaaS market. Together, Microsoft and Amazon make up more than 47 percent of the global IaaS and PaaS market. Recent surveys indicate that many users are already running applications on, are experimenting with, or are planning to use platforms by these service providers. As businesses increasingly embrace cloud solutions, the PaaS landscape promises continued growth and innovation.
