The various formats in which cloud-based IT Infrastructure services are delivered can be confusing to some, but it's important for IT professionals to understand the difference in order to have a good grasp on market trends.
According to Gartner Research, one such trend for 2012 will be the rapid and widespread adoption of Platform-as-a-Service offerings, as more companies look to the cloud for the ability to simplify their operations and make them more efficient.
PaaS, the company said, builds on existing IT Infrastructure solutions to provide centralized management for application servers, database systems and development tools, among many others. This upward swing in PaaS use could quickly turn into a revolution in the way businesses think about middleware.
Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst Yefim Natis said that firms should be proactive in their embrace of the technology.
"Users and vendors of enterprise IT software solutions that are not yet engaged with PaaS must begin building expertise in PaaS or face tough challenges from competitors in the coming years," he stated.
Natis added, however, that the cloud market is still in a state of flux, and that companies will need to remain alert for substantial shifts in the technology's use.
"PaaS products are likely to evolve into a major component of the overall cloud computing market, just as the middleware products — including application servers, database management systems (DBMSs), integration middleware and portal platforms — are the core foundation of the traditional software industry," he noted.
Some of the most innovative of the recently announced wave of PaaS offerings will become available later this year. By the end of 2013, more or less every major business software company will have at least some presence in this market sector, according to Gartner.
While there are undoubtedly some short-term risks in moving substantial parts of a company' IT infrastructure into a new format, these are likely outweighed by the long-term danger of getting left behind, the research firm said.
PaaS is not the only type of cloud offering making rapid gains of late. The market for Infrastructure-as-a-Service, including innovative forms of managed hosting, is also on the rise. These products could be particularly attractive to companies looking to realize savings and take some pressure off their stretched IT budgets, experts say.
