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What Is An aPaaS?
What is an aPaaS
Discover Why aPaaS Technology Has Become The Secret Sauce of Cloud Computing
Written by Ian C. Tomlin | 12th January 2024
Read this article to get up-to-speed on applications Platform as a Service technology.
Definition
A Platform as a Service (PaaS) or application Platform as a Service (aPaaS) is the component of cloud computing services that facilitates the design, deployment and operation of potentially infinite numbers of apps, bots, digital documents and portals using no-code or low-code development methods. This reduces the complexity of building and maintaining a digital infrastructure whilst accelerating applications developments and improving business agility.
aPaaS in the Enterprise
A Brief History
Since 2007, the enterprise computing industry has been progressively leveraging cloud computing technologies to make applications more accessible and available to user communities. The use of cloud hosting applications has made it possible for applications to serve markets and users 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
What was missing was the cloud tooling to enable Software-as-a-Service vendors (and enterprises themselves) to design, deploy and run applications. This is where enterprise aPaaS solutions come in.
Your aPaaS should support the full “Software Lifecycle” which allows cloud consumers to develop cloud services and applications (e.g. SaaS) directly on the PaaS cloud. Hence the difference between SaaS and PaaS is that SaaS only hosts completed cloud applications whereas PaaS offers a development platform that hosts both completed and in-progress cloud applications. This requires PaaS, in addition to supporting application hosting environment, to possess development infrastructure including programming environment, tools, configuration management, and so forth.
An aPaaS Instals Centralized Governance
One of the challenges of porting applications to the cloud has been the risk of data loss. Data security has become an increasing concern to organizations because of their greater reliance on data to continue business operations. aPaaS platforms have to simplify how data is uploaded to the cloud, how it is cleansed, aggregated, and formed into new apps.
Additionally, the increased compliance risks of processing personally identifiable information (PII) have made organizations more concerned about the security risks of cloud-deployed applications. For this reason, being able to track what data is uploaded, who does it, where it goes to, etc. is essential for any aPaaS to be considered ‘enterprise grade.’
A Gateway to Accelerated App Development
aPaaS platforms fulfil the business need to create custom apps. In a digital age, these need to be delivered fast, at low cost, and very low risk. aPaaS platforms began as low-code, then no-code and are now moving to a completely codeless format. Equipping organizations to design, deploy and run as many apps as they need, an aPaaS removes the barrier between IT and ‘the business.’
Coding and scripting is the biggest reason why software development has been traditionally unpredictable, costly and unable to produce best-fit software results. Encanvas uniquely automates coding and scripting. Our live wireframing approach means that business analysts can create the apps you need in workshops, working across the desk with users and stakeholders.
How aPaaS drives digital transformation
Become data driven
With a general recognition that business success is increasingly derived from the ability of an enterprise to master and leverage its data value, senior management teams are increasingly exploring ways to make sense of their operational performance through data. The ability to do away with data spaghetti; to re-use data – to harvest, cleanse, rationalize, and analyze it – has become a mission-critical need. A recent innovation that has added further data handling dexterity to Encanvas is HyperDrive. Launched in 2021, HyperDrive is an agnostic data plug-in enabler that turns any data type, DLL or plug-in into an integrated component of the Encanvas codeless design architecture.
Innovate faster
With businesses using technology ever more to generate a competitive advantage in their market, it’s almost impossible to imagine a business model that doesn’t benefit from a great web app, or customer portal. This is causing organizations to become app factories, churning out custom apps as quickly as they can come up with ideas on how to improve customer experience, service new product lines, and cut back-office operating costs.
Orchestrate processes
To orchestrate business processes, organizations are adopting aPaaS platforms to interface between:
1. Workers and computer systems (human-to-machine-interfacing-applications) and;
2. Computers (machine-to-machine-interfacing-applications).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, some processes require both human and machine interfaces. Additionally, Robotic Process Automation – the use of software robots to manage data flows and automate tedious tasks – has become a common characteristic of aPaaS platforms.
Excel in customer experience
With a general recognition that business success is increasingly derived from the ability of an enterprise to master and leverage its data value, senior management teams are increasingly exploring ways to make sense of their operational performance through data. The ability to re-use data – to harvest, cleanse, rationalize, and analyze it – has become a mission-critical need.
An application Platform as a Service is the ecosystem used to orchestrate the end-to-end software development lifecycle (SDLC) for enterprise apps. While the focus of aPaaS is often towards speed of development, etc. arguably the most important selection factors come down to the hygiene issues of data integration, data security, deployability, scalability, data governance, and resilience.
Low-Code Platforms
The need for greater agility in IT systems, together with the rising influence of operational departments on enterprise software buying decisions, has led to the rise in application platforms that allow non-programmers to author applications. aPaaS platforms will generally adopt Low-Code, No-Code or sometimes even Codeless approaches to developing applications. In doing so, they reduce or remove the need to see or use programming code or script in the design, deployment and operational phases of the Software Development Cycle.
Encanvas aPaaS
Encanvas is an enterprise software company that specializes in application Platform-as-a-Service (aPaaS) solutions and helping businesses to create above and beyond customer experiences. The platform removes the barrier between IT and the business. Coding and scripting is the biggest reason why software development has been traditionally unpredictable, costly and unable to produce best-fit software results. Encanvas uniquely automates coding and scripting. The software’s live wireframing approach means that business analysts can create the apps you need in workshops, working across the desk with users and stakeholders.
In most organizations a gap exists between inflexible Systems of Record – used to enforce good practice in common core back-office processes such as financial management, human resources, and customer relationship management – and demand for applications from departments, users, teams, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders to support the fulfilment of a business model orchestration. A cloud aPaaS creates an umbrella across existing systems and fills the void in useful apps that workers, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders want to use.
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