PaaS Use Remains Stalled at Dev/Test

Charlotte Dunlap

Summary Bullets:

• Microsoft encourages app deployment via Azure, but dev/test remains prominent use case
• PaaS vendors’ eventual move to common code base will ease move from dev/test to production

Microsoft is telling channel partners and enterprises that in the next two years, half of the Fortune 500 companies will be on the Windows Azure cloud model. In fact, I just read Microsoft has partnered with NBC to LiveStream the Sochi Olympics through Windows Azure Media Services. But I keep wondering when Azure will move beyond its compute and network use scenarios and more deeply into platform-as-a-service (PaaS) scenarios. Because what I’m hearing from SIs is that enterprise developers’ use of Azure remains largely limited to development and testing (dev/test) of applications, and less around application deployment/production and integration.