What is an application platform?

Enterprises increasingly rely on apps to streamline processes, innovate at scale and engage new customer bases. As a result, application platforms have become a fundamental part of modern business strategy.

Today’s advanced application platforms offer a standardized set of solutions that allow enterprises to build, deploy and manage applications in an increasingly complex software development and operations (DevOps) environment.

From integrating with new technologies like generative AI (gen AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT), to maintaining performance across various devices and operating systems (OS), enterprises face increasing complexity. As a result, choosing the right application platform has become an essential part of digital business.

Application platforms are critical to application and software development, a market that has been growing rapidly over the last decade. According to a recent report, the global app development market size was worth USD 111 billion in 2024. It is projected to reach USD 621 billion by 2032, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 24%.¹

Some of the largest companies in the world, including Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, are leaders in this space. Their platforms provide the infrastructure, scalability and integration capabilities that modern enterprises need to build and deploy applications efficiently.

Application platforms provide the underlying infrastructure, runtime environment and developer capabilities for end-to-end control over an entire application lifecycle.

Advanced application platforms combine popular DevOps services like automation, data management, provisioning and workflow orchestration into a singular, streamlined ecosystem that can dramatically shorten application lifecycles.

To accomplish this goal, application platforms use components like application programming interfaces (APIs) and containers to streamline and automate processes, enabling developers to focus on innovation instead of managing underlying infrastructure.

Modern application platforms are built to integrate seamlessly with DevOps pipelines by using the most cutting-edge technologies, like cloud-native tools, microservices-based architectures and platform as a service (PaaS) solutions.

Here’s a closer look at application platform components and the types of solutions available.

• Runtime environments: Runtime environments are where applications live after they’ve been built and deployed. “Hosting,” the process of establishing a runtime environment, involves the provisioning and scaling of the necessary compute resources to support an application and make it available to users.

• Development tools: Development—or simply dev—tools are any tools that are required to support application platform performance. They include software development kits (SDKs), command-line tools (CLIs) and code libraries that allow developers to operate more efficiently. 

• Monitoring and observability dashboards: Monitoring, the task of gathering metrics on a runtime environment to assess its health, relies on capabilities like logging, tracing and alerts to help IT teams make critical decisions. Application monitoring and observability dashboards help support application platform operations by giving IT teams a real-time view into application health so they can identify and resolve problems without costly downtime.

• Security features: With newer technologies expanding the attack surfaces of many enterprises, security is a top consideration when considering application platforms. Modern application platforms rely on advanced security features like identity and access management (IAM), data encryption and network security controls to help protect app functionality and data.

• Integration services: Application platform components that support integration provide the necessary APIs and connectors so an app can integrate successfully with various compute resources like databases, networks and third-party solutions.

• Web application platforms: A collection of solutions and server environments built to host popular web applications—such as Slack, Google Workspace and Asana—and their corresponding APIs.

• Mobile application platforms: The necessary runtime environments and services needed to build, test and deploy applications for mobile devices like iOS and Android. Features specific to mobile application platforms include push notifications and real-time databases built specifically for mobile app development.

• Platform as a service (PaaS): Platform as a service (PaaS) solutions are cloud-based tools that give developers a virtual environment in which to build and deploy software. With the rise of cloud computing, the market for PaaS offerings has grown significantly: A recent report estimated the market size at nearly USD 90 billion last year and projects growth to USD 288 billion by 2030, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22%.²

• Low-code and no-code platforms: Low-code and no-code platforms are application platforms that enable users without engineering backgrounds create apps through intuitive components such as visual interfaces, prebuilt templates and drag-and-drop features.

By providing reliable runtime environments for a wide range of new applications, application platforms support the core business processes of many successful enterprises. Application platforms offer several enterprise benefits, from streamlining DevOps timelines to reducing security vulnerabilities. They also support integration across a wide range of operating systems and devices.

Application platforms play a crucial role in enabling digital transformation, a widely adopted approach that incorporates digital technology across all areas of an organization. Application platform solutions help enterprises to use new digital technologies, spur innovation and drive growth.

Here’s a look at some of the biggest trends shaping the future of application platform technology.

• Microservices growth: Microservices architecture, cloud-native architectures where individual applications are built out of smaller components, continues to grow in popularity due to their suitability to modern runtime environments.

• Integration with AI: Modern application platforms integrate more AI features like data collection and processing to automate and optimize complex workflows.

• Open source solutions: As application platforms continue to evolve to meet user demands, open source tools—software developed collaboratively and freely available—is essential. They enable developers to collaborate in flexible ways to solve complex business problems.

• Sophisticated threat resolution: As cyberattacks grow in scope and complexity, application platforms must continue to find new ways to secure the apps organizations depend on.

• Hybrid model development: Balancing on-premises and cloud infrastructure resources in a hybrid architecture remains a priority for enterprises. They continue to seek the right mix of control, flexibility and cost optimization in their infrastructure solutions.

Application platforms are in high demand for their scalability, flexibility and customization capabilities. Here are the top use cases for application platform solutions at the enterprise level.

As organizations look to build more applications for the cloud, cloud-native application development (cloud-native app dev) is becoming more popular.

Cloud-native app dev leverages newer technologies like microservices and container orchestration that are built for the scalability and flexibility of the cloud.

Application platforms enable organizations to modernize legacy systems like SAP and COBOL so they can be integrated with newer, more efficient business systems.

Application platforms are critical in aligning older IT systems and solutions with more modern, cloud-based, data-driven approaches that are better suited to modern applications.

Application platforms are critical to continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, automated DevOps workflows that streamline software development.

In a CI/CD pipeline, the application platform is the central hub that lets developers manage code integration and build, test and deploy code across diverse environments.

Modern, powerful applications require large datasets for their core functionality. Application platforms play an important role in helping enterprises collect, store, process and analyze data in the most efficient way.

Using APIs and highly scalable, cloud infrastructure, application platforms streamline and automate data workflows, protecting data while it’s in transit and enabling real-time capabilities.

Application platforms help enterprises deliver software as a service (SaaS) solutions and web apps through the cloud in a highly scalable and cost-efficient manner.

Application platforms provide the runtime, VMs and container orchestration tools needed to run complex applications on a global scale.