Kubernetes has made something old new again. You may not want to admit it, but you’re probably into Kubernetes because it feels like PaaS.

By many measures (and according to many folks), Platform-as-a-Service, or PaaS, died long ago. Unlike other types of cloud-based architectures — notably, IaaS and SaaS — PaaS never really caught on. It’s true that most conventional PaaS platforms have disappeared. Yet if you look at Kubernetes, the massively popular open-source orchestrator, PaaS is alive and well. In many ways, Kubernetes is basically just PaaS by another name (and with less vendor lock-in).

Here’s why.

What is a PaaS?

Historically, PaaS was a type of cloud computing service that let developers write, build, and deploy applications at scale on a cloud platform.

PaaS was a big deal in the early days of cloud computing – which is to say, the mid to late-2000s. Back then, the idea that you could write an app and deploy it on someone else’s server without having to manage the infrastructure or the development or deployment environments was a big deal. So was having a unified, preconfigured toolset for building and deploying apps.

Today, however, most developers take for granted that they can write an app anywhere, then deploy it to the cloud. Cloud providers have gotten very good at building solutions, like AWS Elastic Beanstalk, that make it easy to take an application and run it in the cloud with little configuration effort on the part of developers.

As a result, conventional PaaS platforms have waned in popularity. Some leading solutions, like Heroku, are still around and are important in certain contexts. But by and large, you’re more likely today to find developers who build their apps in whichever development environment they want, then deploy them to an unrelated cloud IaaS platform. Few consider them users of PaaS platforms.

#cloud #kubernetes