aPaaS the new way to create business applications
Companies that are embracing Digital transformation and Paperless culture realize and face with the limitations of the traditional software development approach, mainly because the high cost, slowness and the high rate of failure, this approach has not being fast enough to meet the unprecedented demand of business apps generated by the consumerization of IT and other macro trends that are impacting the enterprise.
In times where the IT debt supersedes, as per Gartner, the Trillion US Dollars generating an high Cost of Opportunity because those are tools that are not being provided to streamline business processes, generate competitive advantage and support employees to get the work done faster, here is where aPaaS comes up having its foundation in RAD and low-code development tools, Application platform as Service (aPaaS) is a new way to create Cloud Native applications at the speed of business changing needs, these applications are mainly focused on Internal corporate applications and some of the main goals of this new approach is to reduce the Development time and the time to market while driving Innovation and Digital transformation in the workplace.
Cloud-Native applications are web based application built on a web based development environment, therefore we can say that a cloud native app born, run , grow and should be retired or archived on the cloud.
aPaaS introduce a new concept to the desk which is Citizen Development, a Citizen developer are end users who are able to create business applications for their usage and the whole company sanctioned by corporate IT.
From the technical stand point aPaaS is not more than an specialization or subcategory of PaaS (Platform as a Service), as per Gartner, aPaaS is growing at an annual rate of 18.5%, and its sales will supersede platform software sales by 2023, which means that starting that time the most of the applications will be built using aPaaS platforms instead traditional low-level programming languages such as: Java, C#, Python, Javascript, etc, Gartner also provides enterprises with the following recommendations:
- Adopt aPaaS (public or private) to help increase agility and to obtain the capabilities required for digital business.
- Design all new applications to be cloud-native, irrespective of whether or not you plan to deploy them in the cloud.
- If business drivers warrant the investment, re-architect existing applications to be cloud-native and move them to aPaaS.
Both Gartner and Forester highly recommend Enterprises to start looking and leverage aPaaS platform, platforms such as: Mendix, OutSystems, force.com, QuickBase and Aeegle Cloud Platform. Most of these platforms are focused on High-productivity aPaaS (hpaPaaS) for example: Aeegle Cloud Platform supports no-code, model-driven development that enables business experts or citizen developers to rapidly build and deploy cloud-native applications.
aPaaS completely hides the complexity of the infrastructure below the application runtime.
By Darvin Otero ( darvin@aeegle.com)
