Short for
Platform as a Service, PaaS is defined as a computing platform being
delivered as a service. Here the platform is
outsourced in place of a
company or data center purchasing and managing their own hardware and software
layers. Typically, PaaS facilitates deployment of applications, application
development, testing, and also supports the building, testing and hosting of Web
applications. PaaS enables IT to develop, test, deploy, host, and also update
from a single streamlined environment. May also be referred to as
cloudware.
Sun Microsystems identifies Platform as a Service (PaaS)as one of three layers of
cloud computing, in addition to Software as a
Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
