Here’s how ISVs can take advantage of the growing PaaS market and the opportunities available to them.
The IT community is no stranger to the likes of industry buzzwords and acronyms. From Web3 to IoT, keeping pace with current trends and industry evolutions can be challenging. Among the latest? PaaS – Platform as a Service. With the explosion of cloud computing over the last decade, PaaS has emerged as one of the latest innovations, allowing organizations to leverage cloud-based infrastructure within their own business offering. PaaS enables businesses to outsource their need for expertise and cutting-edge technology while still providing a customized and bespoke user experience for their customers based on their specific business needs.
PaaS is an industry differentiator. It won’t be the next industry buzzword to come and go but instead will provide a great opportunity for vendors and developers in the years ahead. So how can ISVs and developers take advantage of the growing PaaS market and the opportunities available to them?
For businesses looking to remain competitive in today’s crowded tech ecosystem, standing out from the pack is key. And with more options to choose from than ever before, the customer experience has become an important differentiator for PaaS providers.
First and foremost, meeting customers where they’re at is one of the driving factors separating the customer service leaders from the laggards. PaaS empowers a level of customer experience that was previously unattainable with flexible features and resources that can be modified to meet business needs. In the context of payments, not taking a one-size-fits-all approach is imperative. The industry changemakers are the ones that approach PaaS like a puzzle, offering pieces to fill gaps in existing infrastructure or provide the entire end-to-end experience in a single platform. With the growing PaaS market, there is more opportunity than ever for ISVs, merchants, financial institutions and other ISOs to find the right PaaS provider that fits their needs with a customer-first, one-to-one approach.
Being customer-centric is a driving differentiator in the growing PaaS market, but we can’t forget that merchants, ISVs, financial institutions, and other ISOs looking for PaaS solutions are also looking for the right tools to help grow their revenue and uplevel their core software. Critical to a customer-first focus is having the right technology in place that is innovative, flexible and easily integrated within existing systems to help solve complex issues. This ultimately frees up time and resources for the business to prioritize other revenue-focused activities.
Increasingly, PaaS providers offer their technology both via API and support white label. Not only does this allow the business’ brand to maintain its identity and support a seamless integration across the organization, but it allows the business to leverage the latest and most innovative technology available, which may be beyond their bandwidth and expertise to develop on their own.
The best-in-class PaaS providers will not only have the most advanced technology but will use that technology to offer merchants, ISVs, financial institutions and other ISOs an easy-to-use, flexible, configurable, and individually branded experience aligned with vertical market requirements and their distinct business needs to bridge gaps in resources and support long-term goals across industries.
Building on the likes of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS), PaaS providers are enabling organizations with the means to maintain agency and authority over their core software with the support of technology and experts. Outsourcing PaaS alleviates management constraints and affords developers the time to focus their resources on their core product.
In the fast-paced environment of the IT ecosystem, it can be difficult to stay on top of the latest trends and industry insights – to separate business potential from marketing fluff. As we look ahead, PaaS will continue to be an important area of support opportunity for developers and ISVs looking to differentiate among the noise and take advantage of platform technologies and expertise. To do so will accelerate the need for PaaS providers with a customer-first approach and innovative and flexible technology offerings.
Penny Townsend is the co-founder and CPO of Qualpay.
