PaaS Is The New N-Tier

Platform-As-A-Service (PaaS) is a significantly different approach to custom application development.  It kicks n-tier to the curb and I love it. Traditionally, applications were built in three tiers: UI, Business logic and Database.

It was all custom code with may be some widgets or libraries for complex functionality.  The entire application was usually expected to run on a single server and we developed the system in a slow, waterfall approach.

Recently, SOA (service-oriented architecture) showed us how to encapsulate business critical functionality into services.  This enabled an application to be distributed across several services and orchestrated with special software.  Using agile methods, developers had access to pre-built objects specific to the business domain and users gained early visibility to the application. [...]

 

To read the whole post and interact, please visit the SogetiLabs blog: PaaS Is The New N-Tier