Is there any general standard that defines what is a SaaS and what is a PaaS. The 2 seems to be used interchangeably? My guess is that everything is SaaS, so is there something about PaaS that makes it different from SaaS and better called PaaS?
+2
A:
In both cases, deliver is "as a Service", ie, you have someone providing hosting / infrastructure, and charging based on utility (ie, how much the service is used).
The difference then, is between what is provided, ie, "Software" or a "Platform".
- Software (generally) refers to a specific application (eg a billing system, or a CRM solution)
- Platform (generally) refers to infrastructure/services that you can use to deploy your own software/solutions.
Or, using proof by example:
- Salesforce.com provides a CRM solution that any business can use. It is a pre-built application that runs on Salesforce's servers.
- Windows Azure provides hosting and a set of services (web servers, storage, etc) that you can use to build and host your own CRM solution.
There's nothing that makes one "better" than the other, since they are two different approaches used to solve two (mostly separate) different problems.
Nader Shirazie
2010-09-20 23:40:51
Thanks. I found this video `http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nreSXywTODA` around 0:35 it suggests Salesforce like to call themselves a PaaS or at least that's what this one customer calls them.
jblue
2010-09-20 23:48:58
Agree. To add, I think they are just "terms" coined by the business people. @Nader's proof by example is the best example to describe the difference.
zengr
2010-09-20 23:50:07
@jblue: That really speaks to changes in salesforce's business model over time. They started CRM solution (Saas), but have since pushed to allow customers to extend and build customisations on top of it, ie, to treat the CRM as a platform (Paas).
Nader Shirazie
2010-09-21 00:01:01
+2
A:
The difference between SaaS and PaaS is really what the software that is being offered as a service is doing. When it is being sold as-is and just run with different data files, it's software as a service, and when it is being added-to with further application-specific software to create a customized service, it's platform as a service. That's it. There's very little technical difference at all.
Of course, in business terms there's a big difference. In particular, SaaS is sold to the end consumers (whether those are private individuals or businesses) whereas PaaS is sold to companies who resell it as products (or to units of large businesses who repackage it for internal customers). This is a very important difference because it changes how the service is billed, sold and marketed, but it is not a technical difference. Mind you, there's not a huge amount of basic technical difference between SaaS and Infrastructure as a Service either; there's very much a technical continuum between them. (Infrastructure is just a very low level platform, and it's all about running software and managing data anyway.)
Donal Fellows
2010-09-20 23:59:53
`There's very little technical difference at all.` I think the biggest difference would be the existence of an API and of course for customizations you need to add a whole bunch of rules what you want to allow or disallow in those custom modifications.
jblue
2010-09-21 00:38:00
@jblue: I've worked with systems where we built several layers of PaaS on top of IaaS to provide SaaS, and that in turn was used as a platform to build out new business. From the perspective of that business unit doing the selling, the thing which we thought of as SaaS was just a platform that they could built on top of. This all ties in quite nicely with ideas in formal supply chain modeling.
Donal Fellows
2010-09-21 08:15:58
And the key difference between things is not technical – there's all sorts of things you can conceive of adjusting at all levels – but rather perspective. One man's platform is another man's service.
Donal Fellows
2010-09-21 08:17:17
+1
A:
SaaS, PaaS and IaaS are the three parts of the Cloud Computing pyramid.
Whereas SaaS stands for "Software as a Service" and refers to a specific application or software, PaaS stands for "Platform as a Service" and is a system that can be used for creating the software(most often a SaaS).
SaaS apps are normally used directly by the end customer (Ex- CRM/ERP used by a business) whereas PaaS is normally used by ISV's, startups,etc. to create apps for reselling or utilization.
Examples of SaaS are Salesforce's CRM and examples of PaaS are Force.com, Heroku, Wolf Frameworks, etc.
Aditya Tandon
2010-09-21 11:42:36
+1
A:
Basically, SaaS is a specific online software solution such as CRM, Project Management, Billing, Accounting etc. that mostly flexible by providing some scalability and extensibility features.
On the other hand, PaaS is kind of base services that contains required features to host many different type of online softwares including SaaS applications.
At this point i can say that there are different kind of PaaS in the market. Some of them are targeting the developer by providing both infrastructures (Amazon EC2, GoGrid) and frameworks (Wolf Framework etc) in specific technologies such as Microsoft Azure, Google Apps, Heroku and more ...
The others (including Force.com and Viravis) provides complete solution for a specific needs (such as online database applications) for developers and business analysts as well as the end users by providing required tools to develop online applications without programming.
As a result, all of the PaaS providers in the market presents a simlified solution for creating and running online softwares including SaaS applications. I think this is the main difference between SaaS and PaaS.
orka
2010-10-18 09:39:20