Features of the development of the Russian PaaS market

2025

Segment characteristics: volume, forecasts, drivers

The demand for automation and digitalization of business processes contributes to the creation and development of new digital products, for which PaaS services provide ready-made software development tools, including development environments and deployment tools. These services help organizations effectively meet the challenges of digital transformation, especially in the face of a shortage of qualified IT personnel, an increase in the number of remote employees, difficulties in purchasing equipment and an increase in its cost.

PaaS is the fastest growing segment that can occupy 25-30% of the Russian cloud market and is actively developing in the direction of flexible solutions and microservices. Demand for platform services (especially Kubernetes databases and clusters) is steadily increasing. The transition to DBaaS, as in all cloud services, corresponds to the overall trend towards digitalization and the use of cloud technologies.

Compared to IaaS, the segment formed later, and its development requires providers to invest heavily in expertise.

Шаблон:Quote 'author=Sergey Naumov, CEO of Timeweb Cloud

Expert volume estimates in 2024, compared to IaaS, look more consolidated. Three main reservoirs can be identified: the most modest - ₽18 -20 + billion; the most optimistic - ₽30 -40 billion; the most common ones are in the range of ₽27 -33 billion. Estimates of dynamics are few, and here we can carefully assume, on average, more positive growth indicators of about 20%. At the same time, there is evidence that the revenue of leading Russian PaaS providers has more than doubled on an annualized basis. The global performance of the segment for this period is $171.5 billion with an increase of^[1]billion^[2]

In 2025, in the Russian Federation, two ranges of estimates (billion ₽) can be noted: 26-28 and 35-50. Experts analyzed the dynamics of growth in this period more willingly, but estimates vary in a wide range from 10% to 50%, while most are more likely to expect a significant acceleration in growth rates. World figures could reach $208.6 billion with an increase of 21.6%.^[3]

The growth margin in the segment is recognized as large. In the long term, PaaS in the Russian Federation is expected to show steady growth with a CAGR of 23% until 2028.

The segment is actively developing due to convenient development tools that allow you to reduce time-to-market, microservice architectures, AI and ML, DevOps. Among the important drivers, experts mention serverless, cloud databases, containerization, Kubernetes-managed solutions, low/no-code-platforms.

PaaS services are actively interested in large companies with internal IT products, system integrators, as well as companies in areas where rapid deployment and continuous delivery of changes are critical.

The scenario of a significant increase in the volume and dynamics of the segment may be due to the ongoing digitalization of the business, the growth of the number of companies developing their own applications.

PaaS Trends and Technologies

The segment is actively developing, adapting to new challenges and business needs. More companies are choosing PaaS to support microservice architecture and Container as a Service, seeking flexibility and scalability.

A serious demand for PaaS was formed during the COVID-19 pandemic, when companies began to actively implement and use services for remote work, multifactor authentication, Kubernetes. In 2025, demand continues to increase, and containerization (for example, Docker) and container orchestration with Kubernetes remain key trends, there is even an increase in the role of Kubernetes as the basis of PaaS with a focus on maximum automation.

SDN Sprut from an experimental tool managed to turn into a standard for building fault-tolerant and scalable systems. Service Mesh is used to manage traffic: Istio, Linkerd and their counterparts are being actively implemented. They enable centralized management of network policies, security, and routing in scalable systems.

The transition to microservice architecture is a steady trend. Companies are increasingly building their IT products as a suite of isolated services, each of which scales and updates independently. This requires platforms not only to support containerization, but also built-in routing, dependency management, and component-level monitoring, rather than the entire system. Such an architecture is in demand primarily among mature teams, where DevOps processes have already been built and there is a need for scalability, stability and quick withdrawal of new functions.

The widespread adoption of DevOps and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools to automate processes and accelerate development is also an important trend. In some companies, the approach to development is still based on one-time scripts and manual assembly. In such conditions, the platform is perceived as "expensive and difficult." But when the team is already working on DevOps principles, knows how to automate, thinks in the SLA and time-to-market categories - it begins to see PaaS as a powerful accelerator, which means there is a growing understanding that PaaS is not costs, but savings.

Шаблон:Quote 'author=Anatoly Trifonov, Head of Onlanta Cloud Services (part of LANIT Group)

At the end of 2024, AI/ML solutions and managed databases (MDB) accounted for over 60% of the total volume of the Russian PaaS market, said Grigory Atrepyev, CEO of Yandex Cloud (part of Yandex B2B Tech). By 2028, they are expected to retain the status of the largest and continue to determine the structure of demand.

There are a growing number of platforms that include tools to automate the full life cycle of machine learning and data models. This makes it possible to run AI projects on the cloud without the need to manually configure the environment.

Шаблон:Quote 'author=Grigory Atrepyev, CEO of Yandex Cloud (part of Yandex B2B Tech)

Шаблон:Quote 'author=Natalia Efimtseva, system architect of ICL Services

A large share also falls on databases as a service (DBaaS) and containerization platforms (CaaS) - 25% and 15%, respectively.^[4]

At its peak are all technologies that help you quickly deploy and scale services, and we are talking not only about AI platforms, but also Serverless, CI/CD tools. Many companies are moving from disparate pipelines to centralized cloud DevOps platforms with support for GitOps, testing, depletion and monitoring in a single interface.

In addition to database services, container virtualization is in high demand for monitoring systems and development pipelines. The development of complex platforms combining tools for developing, integrating and managing applications is noticeable.

Low-/no-code platforms based on PaaS are developing, with which you can quickly create applications without having deep technical competencies and manage them without programming. In this subsegment, Russian-language systems are trending, and the target audience may be SMB and the public sector. For example, Rostelecom and Sberbank have platforms that are actively used to automate internal business processes and digitalize document management.

Flexible tariff plans and payment models, such as pay-as-you-go, allow even SMB to use advanced technologies previously available only to large players.

The active development of domestic platforms is typical for the public sector. The popularity of domestic PaaS solutions is growing, for example, on the basis of P7-Office and Basalt.

Platforms become industry-specific (for example, PaaS for fintech or medicine), they provide templates, SDKs and connectors to specific APIs, which allows you to quickly develop highly specialized services.

Serverless computing (Serverless architecture) demonstrates rapid growth. Function as a Service (FaaS) becomes part of PaaS offerings - the dominant model for event-driven and microservice applications. More and more developers are switching to models in which they do not need to manage servers - only write business logic. For example, Yandex Cloud Functions allows you to run code without managing servers, ITKey and develops tools that allow you to quickly create and deploy serverless functions based on a cloud platform. KeyStack The solutions of this class also have. VK Cloud Selectel

The Russian PaaS market is undergoing a transformation associated with an increase in demand for hybrid and multi-model cloud solutions, multi-cloud architectures. Tools for integrating and managing resources across clouds and local infrastructures are evolving. Companies are increasingly choosing platforms that combine public and private cloud for flexibility and security compliance.

The implementation of the GitOps approach as a way to manage the state of systems through version code is gaining momentum. This increases the transparency, reproducibility, and speed of application delivery.

Amid growing interest in Lakehouse's storage architecture, Russian cloud providers are increasingly developing PaaS services that allow it to be built. In particular, popular compute engines, such as Trino, are added to PaaS. Received a new round of demand and products Apache Spark and Apache Impala. The same trend stimulates the expansion of object storage lease opportunities (S3).

Шаблон:Quote 'author=Evgeny Kuzmichev, Business Development Director of Data Insights Department of Navicon System Integrator and Developer

Also among modern approaches are Edge computing and services for developing and managing blockchain applications on PaaS platforms.

Manufacturers of PaaS solutions are increasingly offering built-in security mechanisms:, enciphering protection against, DDoS automatic audit, RBAC, SAST/DAST tools, security center (for example, Security Deck from Yandex Clouds), which is especially important for the financial and public sectors. Companies are increasingly choosing Russian PaaS providers that guarantee compliance.

Шаблон:Quote 'author=Dmitry Lazarenko, Product Director of VK Cloud

2024

The basis of the target audience of PaaS is made up of developers, IT departments, infrastructure divisions of companies. The largest demand in this segment is formed by the most digitalized industries, such as fintech, retail, IT, e-com, development. The volume of the segment is relatively modest, experts express positive estimates of growth.

Experts say that the differences between IaaS and PaaS are now being erased. The use of hybrid and multi-cloud approaches is expanding in these segments. At the same time, so far PaaS in the Russian Federation is inferior to IaaS in development.

PaaS CA: Diversity of segmentation approaches

Since PaaS services mean already configured platforms for different tasks, customers are able to concentrate on developing their own solutions. So they don't need to waste time deploying, configuring and supporting servers, installing the OS, etc.

{{quote 'author = Oleg Fedorov, Head of Cloud Products and Solutions at Linx Cloud. | Demand in the PaaS segment is mainly formed (65-70%) by large enterprises with their own large staff of IT specialists. The development of technologies based on artificial intelligence and access to the computing power of supercomputers are likely to further strengthen the position of big business in this market. }}

The main CA PaaS in Russia is software developers. Such is the consensus on the responses of experts interviewed by TAdviser.

From the point of view of industry specialization, the greatest demand is formed by companies from the fintech sphere, retail, IT (according to estimates, these three segments occupy up to 70% of the market) due to their deep digitalization. PaaS is also in demand from e-com and development, and other segments are actively increasing consumption.

It is more difficult to draw a watershed in terms of the size of enterprises: PaaS services are in demand among both small and medium and large businesses. PaaS solutions enable organizations with diverse business models to manage IT infrastructure, develop applications, and innovate.

Developers, startups, and small businesses looking to bring digital products to market quickly are using PaaS to speed up application development and deployment without the need for additional hiring of DevOps engineers. One of the main interests for this category is cost optimization. Initially, it was the developers who formed the demand in the segment, but now the infrastructure divisions of the companies have a serious impact.

Large companies see PaaS solutions as an effective way to manage processes, optimize operating costs, provide quick hypothesis testing and, if necessary, scalability of applications.

A dissenting opinion was expressed by Alexey Krishtop, director of cloud services at Astra Group. He also believes that the developers are the target audience, but stressed that everything is limited to this segment, and in other areas of development should not be expected yet.

PaaS is, if you may, a chamber story for programmers, the expert said.

He stressed that PaaS developers are really convenient: you do not need to deploy the infrastructure yourself from scratch, install software, manage...

PaaS segment dynamics

Like all cloud services, PaaS shows year-on-year growth. Russian vendors are actively entering the struggle to attract customers, offering competitive PaaS products.

The estimates of experts in terms of market volume for 2023 vary in the range of 10-23 billion rubles, but more often they talk about 20 + billion. The outlook and growth results are also measured differently.

Most often, experts refer to the next study by iKS-Consulting as the most authoritative source of expertise, claiming that the positive development of the segment and the strengthening of the domestic PaaS market is a trend.

Mikhail Barablin, partner and head of cloud solutions at the Digital Economy League, gave a pessimistic assessment. According to him, the segment's volume is only about 10 billion rubles, and growth in 2024 will be relatively modest - in the region of 8-10%.

The specialist described the segment's growth as "moderate" over the past few years. He doubts that the vector will change in 2024, since the lack of standards, the desire of all providers to create unique PaaS solutions that will "bind" customers to them, the general low quality and functional content of platform services - all this does not allow to accelerate demand for this type of services, makes them secondary to infrastructure.

"Demand for PaaS compared to demand for SaaS and IaaS is even decreasing in the share of the market," he said.

In 2022-2023 PaaS market showed intensive growth in the region of 50-55%. We assume that in the future the growth rate will gradually decline, but annual growth will remain at a fairly high level: 30-35%, - commented Oleg Fedorov, head of cloud products and solutions at Linx Cloud. - Growing competition among providers will contribute to both the expansion of the range of cloud services and the development of customized industry solutions.

At the end of 2023, revenue in the segment increased from 13 to 20 billion rubles, and in 2024 it is predicted to grow to 28 billion. This assessment was given by Alexey Krishtop, director of cloud services at Astra Group. According to him, these indicators do not come in absolutely any comparison with the colossal jump in SaaS and, especially, IaaS. Against the background of the total cloud market, the PaaS solutions segment will gradually "wash out" even taking into account revenue growth compared to previous years. This is due to the fact that PaaS solutions are convenient for developers, for all others the benefit is not obvious. However, there is another side of the coin: the demand for PaaS should just increase due to import substitution, because the more complex software products and the process of creating them, the higher the demand for PaaS services. But here a lot depends on the development culture, the expert noted.

Шаблон:Quote 'author=Natalia Efimtseva, Senior System Architect, ICL Services.

In line with trends

Experts mentioned as key factors affecting the segment

• legislator requirements for data security and protection (from January 1, 2025, according to Presidential Decree No. 166 of March 30, 2022, many customers will be obliged to abandon the use of foreign systems),
• High demand for cloud services (data growth, digital business transformation)
• ubiquitous growth of competition,
• sanctions to which Western vendors must obey.

A little less often talked about the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT), the development of DevOps, ML and CDN technologies, the widespread use of analytics solutions. The regulation of the Internet by Roskomnadzor was separately mentioned along with support within the framework of the national program "Digital Economy."

There is a 152-FZ directive related to the storage of personal data in Russia, as well as a restriction by Roskomnadzor on the use of some services. Alexey Krishtop, Director of Cloud Services, Astra Group.

Oleg Fedorov, head of cloud products and solutions at Linx Cloud, announced several trends at once, including the following.

1. The differences between IaaS and PaaS are erased.
2. The use of hybrid and multi-cloud approaches is expanding.
3. The largest operators are redistributing cloud resources to the regions amid growing local demand.
4. Development moves from centralized IT departments to business units, driving the rise in popularity of minimally coded development platforms such as Power Platform, Power Automate, and others.

According to market experts, in the next four years, the PaaS sphere will develop in the direction of fully managed services. Of particular note is the development of applications based on microservice architecture using Kubernetes/containers and serverless computing, as well as the emphasis on Inner Source culture. This implies that companies adopt approaches and practices specific to open source software communities. Oleg Fedorov.

Director of Cloud Services of Astra Group Alexei Krishtop pointed out that the demand for PaaS solutions depends on the size of the target audience of developers. In addition, companies are fighting for strong specialists, and resources for PaaS can be allocated specifically for them, but only in the absence of opportunities to organize their infrastructure.

Experts also mentioned that the general fashion for AI (although it stands out as a separate big trend) and information security may not play for the formation of mass demand. Mature service providers will win, focusing on the development of the functionality and technical characteristics of their products, actively investing in innovations.

The "modest driver" of the market for SMB was called the reduction in personnel costs. Modest, since these savings alone are hardly enough for significant growth in the company's profits.

Retrospective and Perspectives: Stagnation and Growth

The relatively small development of the PaaS segment (compared to IaaS) in Russia can partly be explained by the fact that companies preferred to have more control over the infrastructure and expected to achieve a better ratio between price and performance.

Шаблон:Quote 'author=Oleg Fedorov, Head of Cloud Products and Solutions at Linx Cloud.

A similar opinion was expressed by Polina Abaimova, business development manager of the Softline Multioblaco competence center. According to her, the maturity of companies and their readiness to move to the cloud greatly affect demand, this is a natural process of developing cloud technologies in the country, when segment growth goes from simple IaaS solutions to more complex platform services.

{{quote 'The PaaS services segment will grow in proportion to the growth of the IT maturity of the Russian cloud market, one without the other is impossible. With the complication of services, a willingness to consume such services should be formed. But the trend towards the transition of all cloud services to the commodity section, of course, will affect the development and growth of consumption of PaaS services, "she said. }}

The understanding is already coming to the market that without the expansion of application development and administration commands that could customize and optimize the operation of container orchestration, databases or object storage of type S3, companies receive unutilized equipment resources, business operating costs are growing and production rates are slowing down.

Шаблон:Quote 'author=Alexander Grishin, Selectel Platform Services Manager.

To date, PaaS has every chance of "shooting." This requires a certain technological maturity and a range of services provided. According to some estimates, we can even talk about the expansion of PaaS.

Шаблон:Quote 'author=Natalia Efimtseva, Senior System Architect, ICL Services.

Experts believe that the market in the near future expects the expansion of product lines from service providers. New players will appear, competition will grow. Providers in this case will form more attractive price models. Integration with Russian OS can become in demand, since they are increasingly required to be used on cluster nodes, and not all managed services conveniently and natively support Astra Linux, Red OS, etc.

{{quote 'author = Andrey Nikitin, Product Director, T1 Cloud. | The development trend of the PaaS segment will continue, already now we can observe the scaling of the PaaS portfolio among the main players in the cloud market: tools and development environments, tools for deploying OS, machine learning libraries, databases, etc. }}

According to the expert, the potential of the segment is high due to the fact that companies that have already tried IaaS computing resources are increasing the consumption of platform services.

Шаблон:Quote 'author=Alexander Grishin, Selectel Platform Services Manager.

{{quote 'author = Dmitry Prede, Director of Public Relations of the cloud platform RCloud by 3data. | The rapid development of digital business transformation will further increase demand for PaaS. We also expect more organizations to start using hybrid and multi-cloud models, requiring PaaS to be flexible and unified in management to easily transition between clouds. }}

PaaS model vendors are expected to continue to improve automation, integration and adaptation of new technologies, including AI and machine learning, and begin to focus more on developing serverless technologies.

Шаблон:Quote 'Oleg Fedorov, Head of Cloud Products and Solutions at Linx Cloud.

Which PaaS services are in demand?

Complex platform services are in good demand: databases as a service (DBaaS), container orchestration systems (Managed Kubernetes), analytical platforms, high-load systems for storing big data, data backup services. The concept of infrastructure as code (IaC) also continues to develop. Cloud databases, business analysis tools and AI-based services stand out from cloud data solutions.

Шаблон:Quote 'author=Polina Abaimova, Business Development Manager, Softline MultiCloud Competence Center.

According to the expert, at the moment DBaaS is in the portfolio of all leading cloud and service providers, and the task of sellers is to correctly position the service on the market.

DbaaS is gaining popularity among organizations due to the fact that it facilitates the process of managing and scaling databases without the need to monitor the state of physical equipment and administration.

One of the key areas of development of DbaaS is the increase in the number of cloud database management systems (DMS) offered and their adaptation to the specific needs of customers.

80% of digital services' data placement, performance, and scalability needs are covered by Kubernetes (K8s) database and cluster delivery service models. These two services are characterized by the greatest user savings compared to the content of their own DBA and DevOps competencies. Promising experts call PostgreSQL, MySQL, ClickHouse, Kafka.

Шаблон:Quote 'author=Konstantin Ansimov, Selectel Product Director.

In addition to container orchestration systems, cloud databases, analytical platforms, the most popular may be tools for versioning, developing and deploying applications, high-performance data storage with S3 access, as well as other solutions for working with Big Data.

Read also

• Cloud services (Russian market)
• IaaS (Russian market)
• SaaS (Russian market)
• Cloud computing: top definitions
• Public clouds vs Private clouds
• Creation of private clouds (Russian market)
• Main trends in the private cloud market in Russia
• Private Clouds - Typical Customers
• Russian IT Services Market
• Private clouds in the public sector
• Private clouds in the banking sector
• Cloud Solutions for SMB
• How do I choose an IT service provider?
• Service companies: Western vs domestic
• Cloud Services Economics
• Cloud Data Security
• Global Cloud Services Market
• Top Trends in the Global Private Cloud Market

Notes