Platform as a service (PaaS) is a complete development and deployment environment in the cloud, with resources that enable you to deliver everything from simple cloud-based apps to sophisticated, cloud-enabled enterprise applications. You purchase the resources you need from a cloud service provider on a pay-as-you-go basis and access them over a secure Internet connection.
Like IaaS, PaaS includes infrastructure – servers, storage and networking – but also middleware, development tools, business intelligence (BI) services, database management systems and more. PaaS is designed to support the complete web application life cycle: building, testing, deploying, managing, and updating.
PaaS allows you to avoid the expense and complexity of buying and managing software licences, the underlying application infrastructure and middleware, container orchestrators such as Kubernetes or the development tools and other resources. You manage the applications and services that you develop, and the cloud service provider typically manages everything else.
