Developing Apps in a Modern PaaS Solution

Do you know what is a PaaS solution? Do you want to learn how it affects software development? Then check out our latest #AskTheHub interview. This week David had a chat with Jonas Kröger, the Lead Solutions Architect at Platform.sh, about PaaS solutions and the benefits it provides to software development. Do you have any questions to @Platform.sh about #PaaS or #softwarearchitecture? Leave us a comment below and we are happy to answer! #AskTheHub is the series where we take questions from the community about business, technology, and product development topics, and talk to one of our partner companies who specializes in the topic.

David: Welcome to another episode of AskTheHub. The series will take questions from the community on business technology and product development and talk with the experts in the fields From the Amplifyre Hub today, we have Jonas, The lead Solutions Architect of Platform.Sh. And the topic is when and why to develop your apps on a modern PAAS solution. Hi Jonas, how are you doing?

Jonas: I'm fine. How are you?

David: I'm doing good as well. And thank you very much for taking the time for the chat today.

Jonas: Pleasure to be here.

David: Before we dive into the topic. Let's talk a little bit about Platform.Sh. What is this company about?

Jonas: So Platform.Sh wants our customers to focus on what matters the most, we want them to thrive, we don't want them to think about you much about infrastructure. We want to facilitate collaboration between teams and developers, especially building experiences on the web. That can be a single website, which can be a large fleet of different websites. That doesn't really matter. We want to have a platform that facilitates all that and just abstracts infrastructure away from them under the hood. We are a remote company. So we've been founded around 2010. The product is actually a little bit older, even as a remote company from the beginning. So, even before the pandemic, we were working from all kinds of different places around the world. Right now we are 250 employees, and we have clients like UNICEF, University of Missouri, Cambridge, audio or mentors that trust and host their websites on our solution.

David: For the people out there, who are not so technical, They might know SAAS, Right? SAAS is likely the most commonly known one. But then there's also PAAS and IAAS, Yes. So, for these people could you explain a little bit. What is meant by the PAAS solution?

Jonas: When we talk about infrastructure for web applications, There are a lot of different options, Of course, on the market. Traditionally, even before infrastructure as a service or IAAS People would need on-premise infrastructure on-premise needs either their own data center or renting space in a data center from someone else, but actually buying hardware, bringing in cables, and everything infrastructure as a service like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform. But they provide basically an abstraction layer on top of that.

So instead of bringing physical hardware to the place, you can use Virtual computers in the end. So you still get a computer from them. And you still have to do a lot of stuff on that computer, installing an operating system, making all the configuration, everything. But you don't need to worry about a disc that's erroring out or something like that. You don't have to exchange that physically. Someone else's doing that for you, and on top of infrastructure providers infrastructure as service providers, we as Platform.Sh being a platform as a service provider, we go even further in terms of the abstraction level don't need to worry about operating system updates about back up your data about the tiny little details That are, all the infrastructure sector configurations that you would need. And then you have software as a service provider where you don't have the flexibility to run your customers’ software, right?

You need to be lying on what they provide and the options they give you on a PAAS. You can actually bring your own system and host it and have access to the data and have access to the source code and make changes to it, Whereas on the SAAS You probably don't have that possibility. So it's really about flexibility, abstraction, and not needing to worry about specifics.

David: Would you say, these are the reasons why I should use the PaaS? I mean, when we talk about this, the general question is, is this right for me or not? Is it then about the flexibility, or is there some other reason to own it?

Jonas: First of all, when running infrastructure is actually hard, I mean, there's a reason why there are so many companies who are specialized in that field. So it requires work, it requires people, it requires a lot of skills these days. Like I said, it's not getting less complex. and so complexity is a huge part of the topic and part of the decision. And the other one is, as you said, of course, flexibility and as well as agility. So I talked about collaboration and quick feedback in the beginning. For example, this is something that if it's integrated in your day-to-day workflow, and it is very flexible and not relying on a very static process, It actually makes you go faster. It brings you faster to the Market. And at the same time, you have the ability to bring in people as needed and don't need to worry too much about setting up everything. Let me tell you quickly how that works on Platform.Sh. So you get an idea of what this feels like in an actual project. Let's say you want to have a new website or a new E-commerce system, or any kind of web application, and want to run it the way it works on Platform.Sh. You would just click and create a new project, Maybe even based on one of our templates. So you could start with a Drupal website already, and then make changes according to your specific needs. At some point, You would bring that website live and receive traffic, get orders on your store. For example, Stuff like that. And then this is not a static site, Right? It lives. It is, there are changes. You want to improve your checkout process. The marketing department is requesting other features changes to the website. So the development team can go ahead and work on those features. But they don't have to work on them in a completely separated world. They would just create a new git branch. everything on Platform.Sh is actually based on git. So you create a new git branch in every git branch and it can be its own environment. Environment means basically, you get back a domain. A URL where you can make any changes, so you can push your new source code to it. Make changes, and you can send that to anybody involved stakeholders like QA teams, your product owner, or even customers, asking them for their feedback on the feature. And then you can integrate that feedback, Make a change, and tell them to check the site again since it's a completely separate environment. You have all the features to do whatever you need to do. You can modify data. You don't need to worry about your production system, because that's still running. And at the same time, you can just share that domain. Right? So it's very fast to iterate over any changes. And then when you're done, you get the feedback. And you want to deploy that to your production set. That's also easy. And the production system makes sure it scales, together with the receiving growth that you have.

David: Let's say, I want a new feature that I would like to do. And I would like to see it fast and easy. What is the outcome? I want to compare different versions of its right And traditional development setting. This is, well, quite a cumbersome operation, or takes time. And herewith Platform.Sh, when should I think about changing to a PAAS solution?

Jonas: What we see in our customers is actually a wide variety of different types, right?
We have large scale corporations that look for a solution where they can host all the different kinds of projects, even different architectures, different text, and have a platform that is secure, compliant, easy to use for everybody, not only internally, but also external people like agencies, while at the same time being future-proof, right?
If you want to switch Technologies tomorrow, and we'll use a different content management The system, you don't want to be locked into anything. And then we have small teams who just don't have the luxury to have a DevOps team that is available twenty-four seven. We have agencies that just want to focus on delivering great experiences and improving their Core Business for their customers and want to make sure the money that they're spending is actually spent on the right place. We also have Freelancers who just want to have a easy and stable and modern solution that they can rely on upon without having to deal with anything related to infrastructure. So you can see that there's a lot of different use cases. And I think this is what you should expect from a modern PAAS these days. It should abstract all the infrastructure and make you less worried. But at the same time, you should have a lot of flexibility How it's used, how it’s integrated and what you actually bring to the host.

David: So thank you. Jonas, for telling us about PAAS Solutions And when and why we should use them

Jonas: My pleasure, great to be here.

David: For the viewers out there.If you have any questions on Platform.Sh, or on PAAS solutions in general, please leave them down in the comments. We are happy to answer them. See you next time.!

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