Agilization

Platform-As-A-Service (PaaS) is a term that's beginning to gain currency and understanding within the large enterprise CIO community. Why? Well probably because CIOs know that there has to be a technology layer that sits between Software-As-A-Service and the Infrastructure of the cloud (now being called Infrastructure-As-A-Service). This technology layer must provide the ability to design, deploy and operate applications on the cloud. Funny, because that's exactly what Encanvas Secure&Live has been marketed as since its launch in early 2010.

Encanvas Secure&Live is a Rich Internet Portal platform that supports the design, deployment and operation of secure and live workspaces that extend networks and processes beyond the traditional boundary of the enterprise. It could be argued that it provides organizations with a white label PaaS solution, Encanvas distinguishes itself today by being the only software platform to remove the need for coding or scripting skills from IT - causing a dramatic factor of 10 economy in the design and operation of applications.

Encanvas has grown its credentials through its legacy of data mashup capabilities and ability to acquire data from disparate sources at the same time (multi-threaded multi-sourcing and linking). This feature gets all the more interesting when built into an affordable PaaS offering that doesn't commit organizations to any particular vendor.

Encanvas has announced its plans to integrate closely with Azure. But this gets confusing when Microsoft talks about Azure in terms of its PaaS capabilities. The obvious question is 'Why do I need Encanvas if Azure provides PaaS anyway?'

To answer it, it's helpful to understand the components that go to make up a PaaS solution.

Oracle has produced a brilliant White Paper on PaaS titled 'Platform-as-a-Service Private Cloud with Oracle Fusion Middleware'. Within it, Oracle paints a picture of where PaaS fits in the cloud stack. It also attempts to outline the solution components for PaaS that I could summarize down to the provision of tools to:

1.     Create a cloud

2.     Acquire, service and mashup data assets

3.     Create software applications

4.     Deploy and operate applications

5.     Manage the deployment environment of applications (including identity management, security, portal provisioning, administration and maintenance etc.)

Azure supports all of these functions in its own way by leveraging its existing enterprise computing components like Biztalk, SQL Server, SharePoint Portal Server etc. and then enriching their cloud architecture with additional tools and componentry. New innovations like Azure's Applications Fabric and SQL Server StreamInsight add considerably to the functionality of Microsoft's cloud architecture providing greater potential to extend networks and processes securely beyond the enterprise.

But there's a still a challenge that remains unresolved by Microsoft. Organizations today want to see a step-change lowering of the cost of designing and operating applications. Microsoft themselves at the launch of Azure stated their vision is to reduce the cost of developing and operating applications by a factor of ten. But today for Microsoft, this objective remains a vision.

Encanvas achieves this significant reduction in IT costs by a combination of measures and innovations that serve to streamline the following processes in the following ways:

Platform deployment

·      One-minute installation of a secure PaaS platform

Data acquisition, ETL, BPM and federation

·      Providing a point-and-click way of acquiring data, transforming and cleansing, creating new data structures to serve cloud applications; able to harvest data from across the enterprise and beyond without complexity.

Application design

·      Encanvas Design Elements and MiddleAppsâ„¢ that remove the cost and complexity of designing applications by removing the coding and scripting overhead achieved by using ready-made building blocks that work like LEGO®.

·      Encanvas Create Design Studioâ„¢ - creating an integrated design environment containing all of the essential building blocks for new applications using a common approach that means only one skill and one tool is required.

Application portal deployment

·      Removing release version control overheads through Encanvas's Version RollBackâ„¢ technology that means new applications stay in tune with platform versions.

·      Encanvas Web Server Managerâ„¢ that provides a single integrated cockpit for architecting new portal spaces so multiple workspaces can be created by one person.

Vendor -Agnostic Federated Identity Management

·      Encanvas Peoplegridâ„¢ technology providing organisations with the ability to operate multiple identity management systems whilst maintaining a coherent and easily managed community and user identity framework.

Security

·      Encanvas Ring-of-Steelâ„¢ technology that provides organizations with the ability to operate multiple identity management systems whilst maintaining a coherent and easily managed community and user identity framework.

Whilst it sounds outlandish to begin with, uniting the strengths of Microsoft Azure in managing the cloud infrastructure with the vendor agnostic capabilities of Encanvas Secure&Live PaaS solution offers a game changing opportunity for CIOs that want to adhere to industry standards while achieving factor of 10 economies through their cloud strategy.

Conclusions

Microsoft is assured a place at the top table of leading cloud computing platform vendors and Encanvas's strategy to focus on supporting Microsoft Azure might well turn out to be a wise one. Even so, there will be many organizations that will not want to commit themselves to a proprietary solution - even if it is Microsoft that's serving it up. Encanvas Secure&Live provides the potential for organizations to install a vendor agnostic solution that has the advantages of delivering huge economies to IT while enabling CIOs to play the field for the most suitable cloud platform for their business.