In Forrester's 149-criteria evaluation of 10 platform-as-a-service (PaaS) vendors, we found that Microsoft and salesforce.com led the pack because of their comprehensive features for application development and delivery pros and strong strategies in the category. Cordys, LongJump, Caspio, WorkXpress, WaveMaker, and Google were the next-strongest vendors (in order) in our analysis, followed by OrangeScape and Tibco Software. Our analysis shows which PaaS vendors are best for professional developers and which are best for business developers. Our analysis also reveals a very immature market with lots of potential risks for buyers.

The PaaS market is a sprawling, fast-changing, and immature market. Most PaaS vendors are small, and even big vendors like Google and Microsoft have incomplete, new products. Salesforce.com has the most mature PaaS, but it just acquired an entirely new PaaS product (Heroku), and its fit into the portfolio and strategy isn't yet clear. The PaaS market's immaturity is also evident in the relatively low scores registered by many of the vendors in our Wave analyses. Whereas many Forrester Waves have four or more Leaders, ours only has two.

Our evaluation of PaaS products for professional developers ("coders") uncovered a market in which salesforce.com — one of the PaaS pioneers — has built a powerful product, market position, and strategy and in which Microsoft has quickly also built a leading position.

Our evaluation of PaaS products for business developers ("business experts") uncovered a market in which salesforce.com is the only Leader. But upstart vendors — most notably Caspio and WorkXpress — provide very strong alternatives. Microsoft does not appear in this analysis because it does not yet offer tools for business experts in its Azure product line.

Forrester clients: See http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/wave%26trade%3B_platform-as-a-service_for_app_dev_and_delivery/q/id/56710/t/2 for the full report.

My colleague, Stefan Ried, used the same data on our 10 PaaS vendors and their products to create analyses for ISVs and service providers. Forrester clients: See Stefan’s report here: http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/wave%26trade%3B_platform-as-a-service_for_vendor_strategy_professionals%2C_q2/q/id/56295/t/2.