Platform as a Service (Paas) is one of a number of terms in the taxonomy of cloud computing including Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas) and Software as a Service (Saas).
While, generally, IaaS is server focused and SaaS is user focused, PaaS is developer focused. PaaS enhances developer productivity by enabling application virtualization, so there is a significant reduction in the need for developers to perform the undifferentiated heavy lifting associated with the plumbing that detracts from the actual work on application code and concerns. Often this is called yak shaving. For instance, it may include everything from installing application runtimes, dependencies, app packaging, staging, and deployment, to configuring deeper ...
