9 Underrated Technologies For Growing Companies

Software as a service (SaaS) gets all the credit among growing businesses these days, as companies increasingly recognize the benefits of getting their applications online and on demand instead of buying packaged software. But while SaaS deserves its accolades, all the hoopla can make it easy to overlook the power behind the throne: platform as a service (PaaS).

Just as SaaS uses the power of the Internet to make it much easier to USE applications, PaaS leverages the Net to make it easier to develop and deploy custom-tailored SaaS applications that do exactly what companies need. Instead of having to develop apps from scratch, PaaS users can mix and match existing components to build even niche applications at remarkably low cost.

PaaS ecosystems -- ranging from Salesforce.com's market-leading Force.com to Bungee Labs, LongJump, and Coghead -- include all of the facilities needed to create Web apps and services, with pre-made modules for many of the things that developers normally have to create anew for each application.

The result is that even smaller businesses in narrow vertical markets may be able to afford apps that give them precisely the functionality they need. That's a big deal, even if people aren't talking about it that much.

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Don't Miss: 9 Overrated Technologies For Growing Companies