Salesforce Acquires Heroku: What this Means for the Future of PaaS

The Git Push Deployment Revolution

Heroku started as a hosting platform for Ruby on Rails. Its core innovation was removing server administration: developers write code, compile dependencies locally, and run a single command to deploy:

git push heroku master

Heroku's buildpacks compile dependencies automatically, provision container instances ("dynos"), and route traffic immediately.

In December 2010, Salesforce announced the acquisition of Heroku for $212 million, validating the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model.

The PaaS Value Proposition

PaaS sits between Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS - like AWS EC2) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS):

• ◆IaaS (EC2): You manage operating system security updates, web servers, and configurations.
• ◆PaaS (Heroku): The platform handles infrastructure. You focus exclusively on writing application code.

For startups and enterprise product teams, PaaS reduces time-to-market by removing the need for a dedicated systems operations team.

Why did Salesforce Buy Heroku?

Salesforce is the leading enterprise SaaS provider, but its developer framework (Force.com) relies on a proprietary language (Apex). By acquiring Heroku, Salesforce can now capture standard developers writing Ruby, Java, Python, and Node.js.

This represents the consolidation of the cloud market: enterprise SaaS providers are moving down the stack into developer platforms.