What will the future of programming code look like for the developer? The millennial generation will not be fully aware of the hardships that their predecessors went through to get a computer program up and running. Long forgotten are the days of punch cards. Now, with the new era of cloud computing, the days of managing infrastructure will be as archaic as short-shorts in basketball.
PaaS Me the Code and Data
Specifically, the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) initiative will help developers focus on what they care most about - data and code. Compared to data center managers and infrastructure specialists, application developers only want to build out their next $1bn app. They don't care what hardware it runs on or where the data is stored. However, PaaS does just that!
Developers can now pay a cloud service provider a relatively small premium to manage the middleware, OS, virtualization, servers, storage, and networking concerns. This is absolutely ground breaking for the developer. Now, the programmer can almost instantly start writing code and getting an application, whether it is web, mobile, or anything else, in under a few minutes.
What Does This Mean?
The direction that the IT industry is moving in has huge implications. Specifically, entrepreneurs will be impacted the most. Start-ups will not have the face the barrier of entry of obtaining and managing their IT infrastructure. The entrepreneurs can simply start writing code to accomplish whatever task they have their passion set on. Enterprises will now have to be on their feet since many more start-ups will emerge posing potential threats to their business. Just look at Uber's attack on the Taxi industry.
When Will It Begin?
It already has. There are a plethora of start-ups that have formed within the last several years that have leveraged an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider to accomplish their dreams. This step towards cloud computing saved this new generation of entrepreneurs the hassle of owning and managing their servers, storage, and networking environment. However, they had to be savvy enough to create their own middleware.
But, with the emerging PaaS technologies, these entrepreneurs will no longer even have to worry about the middleware nor the infrastructure. They can simply jump right in and do what they love - code applications and control the data. There is a pending tidal wave of new start-ups headed towards the beaches of "this is how we have always done it". Are you ready for it?
