Workday

SaaS vendor Workday also finally offers PaaS

Workday has been a SaaS (Software as a service) company and has now entered PaaS (Platform as a Service) at ‘Workday Cloud Platform’. On this platform, one can develop custom applications and extensions using the API provided by the company and can work with applications of Workday (human resources management, finance, planning) and data models based on it.

All the applications that build on this platform are protected by the configurable security of Workday and there is no toolchain dependency. All the data belongs to the customer and no data usage fee is generated.

One can use the open RESTful API, document, and reference application through the new website ‘cloud.workday.com’. This community site also has a developer console for managing resources and applications, and an API search tool. To make Cloud Platform more comfortable for partner companies, Workday will first provide an eight week training program for 80 software partners and others.

Workday Platform Technology’s Senior Vice President Dan Beck explains that Workday Cloud Platform will allow Workday customers to easily build extensions and applications. Cloud Platform will provide many standards-based APIs. The function of the Workday Cloud Platform has been developed together with the design partner at six companies.

Workday is the basic policy to provide building blocks for developing applications using this PaaS. The user interface, workflow, chat function etc. can also be used as parts respectively. The Workday Cloud Platform can be used by customers themselves or it can be used by SI companies and others to support the introduction of Workday to build extended functions for customers.

In addition, one can access Workday’s human resource and financial application data. One can develop applications incorporating new business processes, user interfaces, data models and workflows by using these building blocks with various functions as parts.

What is Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)

Conventionally, when a company constructs a business-use system or the like, it is necessary to purchase and acquire network, hardware, operating system (OS), middleware and application. These components are necessary to build a foundation for combining these to operate the system it was necessary to build and maintain a platform.

PaaS is a service that prepares such a foundation in a large data center and the like, the customer company uses the necessary amount through the net and charges according to the usage record. Compared with cases where all of these platforms are prepared on their own, enterprises can flexibly improve processing performance according to the scale of use of the system, and can also handle all the maintenance and troubleshooting of hardware.

Difference between SaaS and PaaS

SaaS is a short form for Software as a Service. This refers to a form in which software provided as a packaged product is provided/used as a service via the Internet. PaaS refers to an online service for software developers to develop and manage applications without taking time to build infrastructure for development and maintenance.

Summary

To summarize the distinctions between PaaS and SaaS, it can be distinguished by the stage of the provision of the necessary components for providing software services. Its components are roughly divided into five categories: hardware, network, operating system (OS), application and middleware. Basically, these five are dependent on this in reverse order. It is good to remember that applications do not work without middleware and middleware does not work without OS.

PaaS further deepens SaaS’s idea to make it possible to use business software etc. as a service on the Internet, and indeed, PaaS operators often provide SaaS business at the same time. In many cases, it is used in combination by constructing its own business application on PaaS, using common software with SaaS, and so on.