More On PaaS - TMA Systems

Yesterday I posted about how PaaS (Platform as a Service) was the new and upcoming way that companies were going to cut down on their infrastructure costs.

Well, I'm here at the TMA User Conference in Tulsa, OK and I can tell you first hand that PaaS is being implemented at not just the infrastructure level, but at the development level as well. In this press release Servoy and TMA announced that they were partnering to provide their customers with a new technology base for their CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management Systems) system.

Now the interesting thing about Servoy as a platform versus more highly integrated (read: proprietary) systems like force.com is that Servoy gives you, the customer, the choice on how you want to deploy your SaaS solution.

There are a couple of extremes in PaaS:

• Configure it yourself from scratch and have at it (like Amazon's EC3 service)
• Use force.com and their proprietary Apex development environment
• Use Servoy and have a choice of deployment models

Servoy gives you a choice of how you can deploy your solution: on your own internal server, on "traditional" ISP, on a PaaS server, or ANY combination thereof.

Your development platform matters as much as your deployment method. If you have tools that easily allow you to do both - you'll be that much more ahead of the game.