Platform as a service

Platform as a service (PaaS) is a category of cloud computing services that provides a platform allowing customers to develop, run, and manage web applications without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure typically associated with developing and launching an app. PaaS can be delivered in two ways: as a public cloud service from a provider, where the consumer controls software deployment and configuration settings, and the provider provides the networks, servers, storage and other services to host the consumer's application; or as software installed in private data centers or public infrastructure as a service and managed by internal IT departments.

Development and uses

Fotango, a London-based (Old Street) company owned by Canon Europe launched the world's first public platform as a service known as 'Zimki'. Developed in 2005 with a beta launch in March 2006 and a public launch at EuroOSCON in 2006. Zimki was an end to end JavaScript web application development and utility computing platform that removed all the repetitive tasks encountered when creating web applications and web services. All aspects of infrastructure and operations from setting up servers, scaling, configuration, security and backups were done automatically by Zimki. Zimki introduced the tagline 'Pre-Shaved Yaks' to describe the removal of all these repetitive tasks.