10 Reasons Why PaaS Usage Is on the Rise in the Enterprise

by Darryl K. Taft

Almost three quarters (70 percent) of the respondents said they are either already using PaaS solutions for application development or are planning to use them in the future.

Respondents identified demand for increased worker mobility (51 percent) and increased productivity (46 percent) as factors they believe are driving an increase in “mobile-first” application development.

Demand for rapid application development is coming from the highest levels of the company, with 43 percent reporting projects are being directed by C-suite influencers, while nearly half (47 percent) come from existing customers or partners.

Both development and deployment of new applications have been improved for the vast majority of PaaS users. Specific examples of where PaaS has improved those processes include a reduction in timescales (54 percent), reduced costs for development (51 percent) and an increased capacity for innovation (47 percent).

Those using PaaS report average integration times of three days, as opposed to six days for non-PaaS users. The substantial majority of respondents (85 percent) reported demand within their organization to develop and deploy new applications more quickly.

PaaS enables integration of more data sources. For PaaS users, 20 percent of data sources are integrated, versus 6 percent for non-PaaS users.

Only 18 percent of respondents consider their current processes to be agile enough to deliver applications as quickly as they would like. This rises to 27 percent among PaaS users alone, suggesting that PaaS has enabled higher levels of agility for development.

Forty-seven percent of “Develop Your Own Application” (DYOA) development is being done by sales and marketing teams, the largest percentage among all respondents, while 44 percent said finance teams are developing and deploying their own applications.

Forty-seven percent of those polled said that use of PaaS has given them more capacity for innovation within the organization, such as finding new ways to combine existing resources or exploring more innovative ways of using mobile. Twenty-six percent said they are using PaaS for developing wearable tech; 23 percent for Internet of things.

Businesses plan to invest an average of $260,653 on this architecture before the end of the year.