Platform as a Service

End users interact directly with Software as a Service (SaaS) products.  Platform as a Service (PaaS) products are utilized in the construction or implementation of larger systems.

PaaS products include web servers, database servers, file storage, message queues, domain services and many others.

Microsoft Azure offers general-use, container-based web apps.  These specialized containers support a wide variety of Windows and Linux applications.  Supported frameworks include .NET Core, Node.js, PHP, Java, Ruby and Docker.

This class of service has several useful features:

• Reduced administration work load
  
• Cloud providers are responsible for operating system and platform upgrades and patches
• PaaS services are typically less expensive to run that the same services in IaaS environments
• Improved security is accomplished by component segregation
• Ability to scale computing resources up and down easily

CSDI chose to implement our PaaS offering on the Microsoft Azure platform.  Azure offers virtually unlimited ability to scale up.  Even more important is the ease with which many Azure services can be integrated. 

View the video at the lower right for a more complete description of Azure App Containers.