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An application platform is the platform through which an application operates. Modern applications rely on application platforms to converge various types of tools needed for the successful build, execution and production of applications to end users.
Techopedia Explains Application Platform
Some experts break application platforms down into service areas – talking about development tools and operating systems, as well as execution and data services. The development tools are necessary for application development – the execution services ensure that applications can be deployed in particular ways. Data services or storage modules store the information used by an application. Operating systems enable the environment to support the application.
The use of application platforms has led to a lot of talk about new ways of packaging software applications in general. First there was virtualization, in which application platforms were often housed in virtual machines. A new model called container virtualization has become popular, where application platforms are housed in digital constructs called containers – unlike virtual machines, containers share the kernel of a client operating system. This allows for more efficient multi-tenancy on a server.
Containers are innovating the ways that application platforms are built and used, promoting a devops or agile software design approach, and even enabling microservices, where different parts of the application platform are housed in different containers. All of this allows today's engineers and developers to keep thinking about how best to engineer and support software applications.
