Cloud & DevOps
PaaS is a cloud service model that provides a managed platform — including runtime environments, middleware, databases, and deployment pipelines — so developers can build and deploy applications without managing the underlying infrastructure.
PaaS sits one abstraction layer above IaaS: instead of provisioning virtual machines, developers push code and the platform handles server provisioning, scaling, load balancing, and OS patching automatically. This dramatically shortens time-to-market for web and mobile applications because teams focus entirely on application logic rather than infrastructure operations. Popular PaaS offerings include Heroku, Google App Engine, and AWS Elastic Beanstalk, each supporting multiple programming languages and frameworks out of the box. The trade-off is reduced control over the underlying stack, which can be a constraint for highly specialised performance requirements.
Example
A startup deploys its Node.js API to Heroku, which automatically provisions dynos, applies TLS certificates, and scales horizontally during traffic spikes without any DevOps engineer involvement.
Related terms
IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)
IaaS is a cloud service model that delivers virtualised computing resources — servers, storage, and networking — on demand over the internet, billed on a pay-as-you-go basis.
SaaS (Software as a Service)
SaaS is a cloud delivery model in which software is hosted by a provider and accessed by users over the internet via a browser or thin client, with no local installation required.
Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services — including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, and analytics — over the internet, enabling on-demand access, rapid scaling, and pay-per-use pricing.
DevOps
DevOps is a set of practices, cultural principles, and tooling that unifies software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten delivery cycles, improve deployment frequency, and increase system reliability.
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