Market research firm Gartner says that the platform as a service (PaaS) market will soon affect most enterprises and vendors. “With large and growing vendor investment in PaaS, the market is on the cusp of several years of strategic growth, leading to innovation and likely breakthroughs in technology and business use of all of cloud computing,” said Gartner analyst Yefim Natis. “Users and vendors of enterprise IT software solutions that are not yet engaged with PaaS must begin building expertise in PaaS or face tough challenges from competitors in the coming years.”
Gartner believes that most major technology vendors will offer some form of PaaS by the end of 2013. By 2016, the firm expects competition among those vendors to yield new programming models, new standards and new software market leaders. “While there are clear risks associated with the use of services in the new and largely immature PaaS market, the risk of avoiding the PaaS market is equally high,” Natis said. “The right strategy for most mainstream IT organizations and software vendors is to begin building familiarity with the new cloud computing opportunities by adopting some PaaS services now, albeit with the understanding of their limitations and with the expectation of ongoing change in the market offerings and use patterns.”
