If 2015 is predicted as year of PaaS, it may be worthwhile to know why phenomenons like network effects, social interactions, inbound servicing or long tail distribution can alter the way we do business in a digital economy.

By understanding what constitutes your platform business model, one can ascertain how ready it is to serve in a digital economy.

One of the key tenets in a platform world is building interactions FIRST. If your business connects producers (i.e. developers, testers etc.) to consumers (Business leaders etc.) in multitude of different ways like access from any device, self-served provisioning etc. then you have natural probability to reduce cycle time between idea and execution. When your cloud platform allows multiple interactions it increases enterprise flexibility, drives structural change and fosters real-time go-to-market products. Decoding the “PaaS” landscape requires enterprises to not just host applications in cloud but rather transform them before hosting.

A non-exhaustive list for PaaS stack could contain-

• Loosely coupled services (i.e. micro-services) between tiers. Each micro-service can have its own dependencies. This is in contrast to traditional applications which may not be agile.
• Responsive and reuse of applications or services – having automated deployments enables faster response to market demands and scaling as needed. Load-balancing and sharing promotes reuse of common services across business units improving applications that use these services.
• Polyglot experience – The more languages, databases and operating systems a PaaS platform supports, easier it becomes for legacy applications to take the leap.