Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Moving from a 'Platform' to the 'Platform-as-a-Service' ~ What is it all about?

Written by Kathiravelu Pradeeban




Carbon Middleware Platform for each department.
In a traditional system, we see each department is equipped with its own middleware platform. With the Cloud Middleware Platforms (CMP), a single product which is installed and managed centrally, can replace the entire set of platforms installed separately, say for each departments.



Tenants, while sharing the same resource, will not be aware of the existence of the other tenants. Here, multi-tenancy enables centrally installed/deployed and managed resources, providing an independent middleware platform virtually for each department, registered as a tenant, in the organization's cloud middleware platform. Each tenant can have multiple users.


Now, a cloud middleware platform, when is hosted on a private, public, or a hybrid cloud infrastructure, becomes a Platform as a Service. Cloud Middleware Platform is also referred to as a cloud enabled application platform (CEAP), by Gartner, indicating that the application platform is cloud-enabled.



Stratos Cloud Middleware Platform


Are all the application platforms are cloud enabled? No, obviously not. The cloud enablement comes with the fruits of multi-tenancy, and the native support to be a cloud platform. 


An ideal example would be, WSO2 Carbon Platform, where the same platform, cloud enabled, becomes WSO2 Stratos Cloud Middleware Platform. A cloud middleware platform can usually be hosted over the cloud as a Platform as a Service. It should be noted that not all the PaaS are provided as a fully functional cloud middleware platforms. WSO2 StratosLive, the open java PaaS, is the publicly hosted cloud deployment of Stratos, from WSO2. Migration of your applications between the PaaS, and the Cloud Middleware Platform behind the PaaS are generally an easy job. WSO2 provides it from the bottom up - from an enterprise middleware platform named as Carbon, to the cloud middleware platform named as Stratos, and finally to the Platform as a Service - StratosLive and the other public, private, or hybrid clouds with Stratos as the Cloud Middleware Platform.


An open platform as a service is committed to fight against the vendor lock-in, by adhering to the open standards. Open source technologies help a lot in being committed to being open. Being open means, the application developers should not be writing an application solely focusing a platform. WSO2 is open by design.



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