What is platform and why we need PaaS?

What is Platform?

A platform is nothing but anything you can leverage to accomplish a task in a simpler/better way. As a programmer or developer we can take advantage of using existing code instead of writing from scratch. The most well known software platforms for Desktop applications are Windows, Mac OS. Even we can say some other examples to these explanation is Unix, Linux and Android, iOS etc.

A Computing platform or Digital platform is the environment in which a peace of software is executed.

Why we need PaaS?

In traditional IT decade, we have to manage everything that is like applications, OS, Servers, etc. So, we have to hire System Engineer to take care of our system and motor 24/7 of a week.

With the improved technology, we no need to worry about taking care of above all parts. There are some parts which are taken care by the service provider. Look at below image,

As per the above image, Virtualization, Servers, Storage and Networking are taken care by the Service providers. These kind of platforms are called as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and delivers to us by Amazon or Redshift.

With the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), we no need to worry about taking care of Software or Hardware. Those all taken care by service providers. All we need to do is develop our applications and services on top it. Lets look at below image,

Differences between Traditional IT, IaaS and PaaS:

Goals of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS):

The ultimate goal of a PaaS is to make it easier for you to run your website or web application no matter how much traffic it get’s. It’s all about giving responsibility to run our applications and services properly with minimum downtime and issues.

We just deploy our application and service figures out what to do with it. Providers give us the guarantee that we can deploy our application without any problems. PaaS should handle scaling seamlessly for us so we can just focus on our application and code running it. We no need to worry about underlying details like, OS, CPU,etc which are taken care by platform.

PaaS Providers:

There are no of service providers available in now a day cloud market. Out of these, we can say the below few are biggest cloud service providers.

Previous: Different Service Models in Cloud

Next: Design Consideration and 12 Factor App

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Service models in Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing is a paradigm that permit on demand network access to shared computing resources. Cloud computing also known as model for managing, Storing and processing data on-line via the network. In the below I am mentioning few of the cloud computing characteristics,

• On demand Service – you use when you need it.

• Network Access – Uses internet as a Medium.

• Shared resources – Resources are pooled along, employed by multiple purchasers

• Scalability – Allows elasticity of resources.

As I have already mentioned in previous post, if we need to understand about the Cloud Computing, we need to know about basic cloud platform service models like SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. These are also known as,

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS):

Provides the patron/consumer the capability to provision of processing, storage, networks and other fundamental computing resources. Consumer/patron is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications.

Consumer/patron does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems. Few examples of IaaS is,

• Amazon EC2
• Windows Azure
• Google Compute Engine
• Rackspace

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS):

Provides the patron/consumer the capability to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer created or acquired application developed by using programming language and tools supported by the provider. In this model consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including networks, servers, OS…etc.

Consumer has control over the deployed applications and possibility application hosting environment configurations. Few examples of PaaS,

• Pivotal Cloud Foundry
• Heroku
• AWS Elastic Beanstalk
• Force.com
• Google App Engine
• Apache Startos

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS):

Provides the patron/consumer the capability to use the provider’s application running on a cloud infrastructure. These applications are accessible from numerous clients like an internet browser, a mobile or a tablet.

• Web based email
• Real-time chat applications like Skype, Facetime or WhatsApp
• Collaboration applications like Office365 can be examples of these kind of applications.

In these kind of systems consumer doesn’t manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure
Which are the top 10 Cloud Computing Vendors?
As per the Forbes result dates on 06/01/2019, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM are top 3 Cloud vendors. Look at below image for more information.

Which is more popular out of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS?
We can not decide that which is the popular service out of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS because each one of them are popular different perspectives. Below is the detailed information why each one of the service is popular.

• IaaS: Infrastructure-as-a-Service is more popular in the perspective of users into research and high computing areas.
• PaaS: Platform-as-a-Service is more popular in the perspective of developers because the developer can put all their concentration on developing their apps and leave the rest of management and execution to the service provider.
• SaaS: Software-as-a-Service is more popular in the perspective of consumers, who bother about using software/application like email, social networking, etc.

Previous: What is the need of Cloud Computing?

Next: What is Platform and why we need PaaS?

Cloud Foundry – CF CLI

The way how we use Command Line Interface – CLI for Angular, React and other technologies, we have CLI for Pivotal Cloud Foundry also. In this article we will learn how to download Cloud Foundry (CF) CLI and install. We will also look at the list CF commands available. If you have not yet registered an account with PCF, please do by clicking on below link. It’s completely free, no need to register any debit/credit cards or to pay a single penny for it. But, required an email account and mobile number to validate account with PCF.

PCF Registration

Now, we download CF CLI from pivotal portal. You can use below link to navigate to official  Pivotal’s portal and choose the one which will be suitable for your OS from a drop-down option. By default Windows 64 bit CLI is pointing.

Download CF CLI

Follow the below steps to install CF CLI. You will get the below screen as on when you run CF installer.

Click on Next to move further installation process.

Browse the PATH where do you want to install and click on Next to move on… By default will be pointed to C drive current logged in user account.

Now, CF CLI installation setup is ready. Just press on Install button to complete the installation.

Done, you have successfully completed the CF CLI installation.

To know it has been successfully installed or not? open CF CLI and execute the command of CF. You will see the list of commands show in CLI along with the CF Version details.