Cloud is a hot topic. From year to year industry analysts predict explosive growth in this technology segment. It was also predicted that 2013 would bring continued growth to all primary cloud services segments. SaaS, PaaS and IaaS combined will mature at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 25%. PaaS and IaaS alone will grow increase from $964 million in 2010 to $3.9 billion in 2013. People all over the world are enjoying new capabilities, thanks to the cloud.
Not so long ago Platform-as-a-Service was the smallest segment within the cloud computing market. But in recent years it has grown significantly. Of course the PaaS market share is not as large as IaaS and SaaS, but this type of software is rapidly gaining prominence. According to a recent Gartner research study, PaaS will increase from 3% to 43% by 2015. This trend has been adopted by most cloud vendors like Amazon, Google, Salesforce and others. The PaaS market also encompasses a number of smaller players. What makes PaaS so attractive? It can simplify the process and increase the speed of application development, save money, and let development teams focus on innovating their applications and business, instead of routine administration work.
PaaS, like cloud computing in general, tends to be a topic geared towards the American market and the reason is obvious. Many of the biggest providers of cloud resources and services are based in the USA. That’s fair enough, but other continents, (particularly Central and Eastern Europe) are not far behind. CEE has become an important geographical influence for the IT world in general. It’s not only a popular region for outsourcing, but it’s also the home to a growing number of talented developers and entrepreneurs creating innovative web applications. Moreover, the European Commission is optimistic about the future of cloud computing in this region.
From the moment we started working on Jelastic, we knew that we wanted to make it available everywhere, unlike Google or Amazon, where you are restricted to hosting in specific regions. This was one of the reasons that we decided to work with established, respected, innovative and reliable web hosting service providers around the world. A relevant concern that you run into if you are trying to use something like GAE, is that all of your data is housed in the US. This isn’t ideal for many people, for legal and personal comfort reasons.
With a fast-growing, global customer base, Jelastic Cloud PaaS is confident that developers in countries around the world want a local Java and PHP host that supports their native language. Through its exclusive partnerships with providers, Jelastic has grown to over 40,000 users (in the 18 months since it was launched) and approximately 16% are from Eastern and Central Europe. This is compelling proof of significant cloud computing progress and growth in this region.
The current tech scene in Central and Eastern Europe is extensive. Thousands of developers world-wide are leveraging Jelastic to host their Java and PHP apps. The majority are Russians (37%), followed by Ukrainians (34%), Poles (8%) and Romanians (4%). The remaining countries share from 0.3% to 3% of the market.
It's no secret that we are an American-Ukrainian-Russian startup company, so strategically, having partners in Eastern and Central Europe is imperative for us. Jelastic enthusiastically welcomes relationships with web hosting providers and datacenters, to showcase and share with developers, the ease of use, flexibility and automation that Jelastic provides.
