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Cloud Expo: Blog Post

Platform as a Service: New Offerings from IBM and Oracle

PaaS features of major players
By Srinivasan Sundara Rajan
Article Rating:
July 3, 2012 03:00 AM EDT
Reads:
 5,914

PaaS Booming
After an initial sluggish start, where Microsoft Windows Azure was the only player, we started to see increased support for Platform as a Service from major vendors starting with VMware vFabric and Red Hat OpenShift.

However, there was still a void in the PaaS space as the major players IBM and Oracle initially did not announce any PaaS offering. Now the recent announcements from both Oracle and IBM have shown complete support for PaaS as the way to go for future enterprise application development. This is great news for enterprises to move forward. Let's analyze the developer-friendly features of both the IBM and Oracle PaaS offerings.

Feature Comparison of IBM vs Oracle PaaS

Oracle Cloud - PaaS

IBM Cloud -  PaaS

As part of platform services, Oracle Database Service is available. It is built on the Oracle Database 11g Release 2. It has got the full support of standard SQL and PL/SQL.

 

From API perspective  JDBC  and  RESTFUL Web Services support are exposed.

 

Oracle Application Express (APEX)  supports rapid application development .

IBM PaaS  which is known as the IBM SmartCloud Application Services also provides  Database As A Service  based on DB2 Enterprise Edition  Server.

 

Between Oracle and DB2  there are very little differences from enterprise usage. If you look into the www.tpc.org for  transaction processing performance, both have achieved  impossible heights which will suit for any normal processing needs.

Oracle PaaS   named as  ‘Java Cloud Service' provides  a complete development environment for Java EE.

 

As  Java EE standards are continuously evolving,  as of now the service, supports  all  EE components like SERVLETS, JSF, JPA, EJB , JAX-WS.

The entire platform is supported with the container framework delivered by the Oracle WebLogic Server.

IBM Application Services for SmartCloud (PaaS) supports middleware development using  Java EE and .net.

The  roadmap suggests support for ESB(Enterprise Service Bus)  as Service and Messaging As A service. While the implementation level details are yet to be elaborated from publicly available materials, it would be certain that  these platform offerings  extensively use the  highly scalable WebSphere Application Server suite of products.

Much Like Oracle VS DB2, there are no obvious lenience to any of  WebSphere or WebLogic . Both have existed  for a while and have been supporting  tons of mission critical  applications.

To support rapid application development life cycle,  the Oracle PaaS environment  supports, Jdeveloper, Eclipse and Net Beans.

 

The  build and deployment process is supported with the framework and tools , Ant, Maven.

 

Other than the  built in features of JDeveloper no explicit Application Life Cycle Management tools are see in Oracle Environment.

IBM PaaS  inclusive of  popular  Rational suite of ALM (Application Life Cycle Management) products.

As the Application Life cycle  has multiple phases respective products  will  support the phases of SDLC.

 

IBM Rational Requirements Composer

IBM Rational Quality Manager

IBM Rational Design Management

IBM Rational Team Concert

 

Also  Application Environment Service support deployment  of  applications based on pre configured patterns. The Workload  deployer component  provides a easy graphical interface to package an entire application.

 

Summary
Detailed technical documentation, "How Tos," is not yet available on both versions of PaaS. However, from these highlighted features PaaS gets further momentum in the enterprise and will soon become the development environment of choice.

Published July 3, 2012 – Reads 5,914
Copyright © 2012 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

More Stories By Srinivasan Sundara Rajan

Srinivasan Sundara Rajan (Also Known As Sundar) Is A Enterprise Technology Enabler for realizing business capabilities. His primary focus is enabling Agile Enterprises by facilitating the adoption of Every Thing As A Service Model with particular concentration on BpaaS (Business Process As A Service). He also helps enterprises in getting meaningful insights from their structured and unstructured and real time data sources. All the views expressed are Srinivasan's independent analysis of industry and solutions and need not necessarily be of his current or past organizations. Srinivasan would like to thank every one who augmented his Architectural skills with Analytical ideas.

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