Platform as a Service landscape

Small and medium software companies wanting turnkey solutions that are better and cheaper, increased in the recent past and they make up ~90% of the IT market. Customers want a tight coupling with the software development so they get benefited from continuous integration and reduced turnaround time for new features/fixes. The solution is to leverage Platform as a Service.

The cloud market is heating up with multiple big players investing huge, big customers, increasing their cloud adoption and many service providers are ready to leverage provide Platform as a Service, so it is time for us to take a brief look at various players in the market.

• Amazon Web Service
• • URL to access is http://aws.amazon.com 
  • Users can start for Free (http://aws.amazon.com/pricing/) 12 months free access to AWS Free Trail. it's having hundreds of thousands of registered users and running ~11 million applications 

• Google App Engine 
• • URL to access is https://cloud.google.com/ 
  • Users can sign up for Free and get $300 worth Google Cloud Platform Services. this is expensed only if you exceed the free quota ( https://cloud.google.com/appengine/#pricing ) The trail ends in 60 days or $300 spent. 
  • It's having hundreds of thousands of registered users with a million applications running.

• IBM Bluemix
• • URL to access is http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/us/en/paas.html
  • Users can start free with IBM ID (anyone can create an IBM ID), no credit card information required
  • Currently having thousands of users with thousands of applications hosted & running

• Microsoft Azure 
• • URL to access is http://www.windowsazure.com
  • Users can start with free signup for 30 days with $650 to spend
  • User needs to provide a Windows Live ID, phone number and Credit Card information
  • Complete details of pricing can be found at http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/overview/

• Redhat OpenShift
• • URL to access is http://www.openshift.com
  • Users can start free and does not require to provide Credit Card information 
  • Currently having thousands of users million applications running

• Salesforce1 platform 
• • URL to access is http://www.salesforce.com/platform/overview/
  • Users can start free with a 30 day trial using google+ / facebook / linkendin accounts (to save time) or create a fresh login
  • More pricing details at http://www.sfdcstatic.com/assets/pdf/misc/DS_Force_Pricing_Comparison.pdf
  • Currently having millions of users with millions of applications hosted and running