By Penny Philpot, Group Vice President, Worldwide Alliances & Channels, Oracle

Each on its own, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) enable service providers to leverage the cloud while delivering agility, cost savings and security to customers. Together, PaaS and SaaS—or, more to the point, PaaS for SaaS—provide an end-to-end continuous integration/continuous delivery platform that increases competitive advantage and time to value for existing and new SaaS applications. 

Many companies today are using SaaS in some way, shape or form, and more and more are adopting PaaS. According to Gartner research, SaaS revenue was expected to grow 21 percent this year, and strategic adoption of PaaS offerings has outperformed previous expectations “as enterprise organizations are increasingly confident that PaaS will be their primary form of application development platform in the future,” said Gartner research director Sig Nag.

With a cloud platform that integrates database and application server capabilities, companies can leverage PaaS to extend SaaS applications. Oracle Cloud Platform, for example, eliminates application silos by making it easy to integrate data and processes across Oracle and non-Oracle SaaS and on-premises applications with hundreds of out-of-the-box adapters and connectors. A company could write extensions to Oracle Sales Cloud and deploy them on Oracle Java Cloud Service–SaaS Extension. PaaS for SaaS—which is a model, and not a product or solution–can also be used to extend and customize on-premise applications. 

Why PaaS for SaaS right now? There are a number of factors contributing to the increasing value of a PaaS for SaaS model, including:

It’s an application-oriented world: Applications—for internal and external customers—provide a distinct competitive advantage. But in today’s dynamic business environment, it’s not just the applications that are important; it’s the ability to extend those applications to meet the changing needs of employees, partners and customers. PaaS for SaaS enables companies to do this.

It’s a hybrid world: PaaS for SaaS supports the integration of application platforms, a key capability for organizations that are utilizing a mix of on-premises and cloud-based systems.

It’s a changing world: Back in the day, companies would implement monolithic applications that required careful (and carefully scheduled) care and feeding. Today, applications are spun up and down—and extended–as needed. In fact, companies that don’t have this kind of application flexibility will find themselves following rather than leading.

It’s a seamless world (or, at least, it’s perceived to be): People experience near-seamless transitions from application to application from their smartphone ecosystems, and they expect the same no matter what medium they are interacting with. Companies can use PaaS for SaaS to extend applications while maintaining the same customer experience throughout.

It’s an insecure world: PaaS for SaaS tools such as Oracle Identity Cloud Service offer identity management capabilities that simplify and help secure access from any device across SaaS and on-premise applications.

The need to extend applications will only grow as we move into the New Year and beyond, which will make tapping into the synergy between PaaS and SaaS even more compelling.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.