2011 will be the year of PaaS, says Gartner

MUMBAI, INDIA: Research firm Gartner Inc.on Monday said that all leading enterprise software vendors and large cloud specialists would introduce new platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings in 2011, making it the year of PaaS.

These leading vendors are expected to deliver new or strongly expanded PaaS service offerings and cloud-enabled application infrastructure products, said a Gartner release.

“By the end of 2011, the battle for leadership in PaaS and the key PaaS segments will engulf the software industry,” said Yefim Natis, vice president and analyst at Gartner.

“New vendors will enter the market through acquisitions or in-house development. Users can expect a wave of innovation and hype. It will be harder to find a consistent message, standards or clear winning vendors,” he added.

PaaS is a common reference to the layer of cloud technology architecture that contains all application infrastructure services which are also known as middleware in other contexts.

Gartner believes that during the next five years, the adoption of PaaS in most midsize and large organizations will not lead to a wholesale transition to cloud computing. Instead, it would be an extension of the use patterns of on-premises application infrastructures to hybrid computing models where on-premises application infrastructures and PaaS will coexist, interoperate and integrate, the release said.

"The cloud computing era is just beginning, and the prevailing patterns, standards and best practices of cloud software engineering have not yet been established. This represents an opportunity for new software providers to build a leading presence in the software solutions market," Natis added.

During the next five years, the now-fragmented and uncertain space of cloud application infrastructure will experience rapid growth through technical and business innovation. Large vendors will grow through in-house development, partnerships and acquisitions, while small vendors will grow through partnerships and specialization.

Gartner predicts that by 2015, most enterprises will have part of their run-the-business software functionally executing in the cloud, using PaaS services or technologies directly or indirectly.