IoT Adoption Is Driving the Use of Platform as a Service

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The widespread adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) is driving platform as a service (PaaS) utilization, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner predicts that, by 2020, more than 50 percent of all new applications developed on PaaS will be IoT-centric, disrupting conventional architecture practices.

"IoT adoption will drive additional use of PaaS to implement IoT-centric business applications built around event-driven architecture and IoT data, instead of business applications built around traditional master data," said Benoit Lheureux, research vice president at Gartner. "New IoT-centric business applications will drive a transformation in application design practices that focus on real-time contextually rich decisions, event-analysis, lightweight workflow, and broad access to Web-scale data."

Most new IoT-centric solutions will be implemented on IoT platforms, a form of multifunctional comprehensive PaaS that is a hybrid, architecturally coherent integration of application platform as a service (aPaaS), integration platform as a service (iPaaS), IoT device management, orchestration and business process management services as a platform (bpmPaaS), database PaaS (dbPaaS) and analytics services.

Other PaaS predictions from Gartner include:

Through 2018, more than 70 percent of IT organizations planning a private PaaS will deploy a container service (rather than PaaS framework software).

Instead of constructing a private PaaS using a PaaS framework, many organizations adopt a container service. An advanced container service provides subscribers with self-service access to container-based infrastructure. It hosts, orchestrates, schedules, scales and ensures the reliability of containers. It may also provide other capabilities, such as monitoring, load balancing and securing container communications.

"For advanced technical teams a container service may be better than a PaaS framework for the desired balance between developer productivity, breadth of viable application architectures, IT operations control, and the complexity of implementation," said Lydia Leong, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "A container service is also a relatively inexpensive acquisition alternative to PaaS frameworks."

Through 2018, more than 80 percent of organizations that deploy or assemble self-managed PaaS frameworks will not achieve the expected cloud PaaS experience.

By investing in cloud platforms, enterprise IT leaders are seeking some or all of the key benefits of cloud for their new IT initiatives. However, in the next three years, many self-managed private PaaS initiatives will fail to meet the IT organization leadership's expectations of cloud characteristics. The tension between the forces in favor of private PaaS and those demanding the full public cloud experience will intensify as self-managed private cloud disappoints. Managed private (or public) PaaS will emerge as best practices.

"Success with a private cloud (including PaaS) requires a recognition of the essential cultural and organizational changes to IT organizations, as well as technology changes," said Yefim V. Natis, vice president and Gartner Fellow. "Lacking this understanding leads many organizations to stop their PaaS investment at the point of technology deployment — leading to disappointing results down the road."

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