So, why are these industry titans offering PaaS? What benefits does PaaS provide? For IT organizations that are out of data center power and space, don't have the manpower to manage additional applications, or simply want increase their application capacity quickly and easily, PaaS may be the ticket. PaaS providers supply the entire application environment including hardware, operating system, and application platform. Thus IT organizations don't have to expend precious capital building and maintaining IT infrastructure.

Furthermore, PaaS providers, such as Microsoft with Azure, have built an agile IT infrastructure optimized for change. Using a PaaS cloud provider, IT organizations have the ability to quickly provision additional IT infrastructure based on customer demand. Conversely, if business is slow, an application can be scaled back, using only the resources it needs. And because the IT infrastructure is shared by multiple customers, PaaS providers can keep hosting costs relatively low, as compared to a single IT organization that owns and operates their own data center.

PaaS also provides new business models for independent software vendors (ISVs) looking to gain entry into the SaaS market. Today's workforce demands that productivity applications be accessible via a mobile device on a 24x7 basis. As a result, ISVs are moving to a SaaS business model to meet this demand. But many ISVs don't have the capital to compete in SaaS market. Most ISVs lack the ability to build the IT infrastructure necessary to host their own applications and the capability to manage the additional infrastructure. PaaS provides the development environment and infrastructure ISVs need to compete in the SaaS market.

But one can argue that these benefits apply to all PaaS providers. What is it about Microsoft's Azure platform that makes it different compared to Google's App Engine or Force.com? Answer: Microsoft's old faithful, the .NET development platform.

The .NET Advantage