Serverless Computing

The wave of digital transformation has left companies racing to improve end-user experiences, part of which involves improving developer operations to achieve greater business outcomes. The introduction of cloud computing changed the way companies ‒ across industries ‒ think about IT infrastructure, eventually prompting the rise of containers, like Docker and Kubernetes, that enabled developers to break down monolithic programs to run more efficiently. Serverless computing, or functions-as-a-service (FaaS), isn’t new, but it’s becoming clear that it’s the next evolutionary step towards leveraging the full potential of cloud technology and achieving greater organizational agility

What Is Serverless Architecture?

As with many revolutionary technology trends, serverless architecture is hard to pin down and summarize in a simple, catchy soundbite. It is a technology that is becoming increasingly important and which could also play a crucial role in the future of cloud computing — especially for enterprise systems.

Serverless architecture is a way of approaching cloud computing in which cloud service providers manage the allocation of server resources in a dynamic way. Processes are run in isolation and are fired when certain triggers or events happen the resources required to run the process is typically managed by the cloud provider. By combining third-party cloud services, client-side logic, and the ability to call/request cloud-based services with a variety of triggers, serverless architecture delivers what we often refer to as Functions-as-a-Service (FaaS).

A serverless approach doesn’t completely eliminate servers ‒ it’s a misnomer. Rather, in a serverless environment company no longer have to own, maintain or manage servers or virtual machines (VMs) to run the code. They are freed of traditional server-based architecture.

A report from Cloudability found that serverless adoption in the U.S. grew by 667 percent in the fourth quarter of 2017, up from 321 percent just the quarter before.

This growth in popularity can be attributed to the simple fact that serverless computing requires no infrastructure management. It’s an attractive option for developers looking to build a more dynamic cloud-native architecture that can scale on demand and can free up resources for business initiatives that will move the needle towards greater business value.

Big Players Cashing In

Many enterprises have adopted serverless and its underlying FaaS platform as part of their existing public cloud architectures. Amazon has led the serverless charge with the introduction of Amazon Web Services (AWS) Lambda in 2014. Since then, other major cloud providers have also announced their own serverless offerings, including Microsoft Azure Functions, Google Functions, and IBM Functions.

Google recently announced an open source project called Knative that brings serverless-style functions written in any programming language to existing infrastructure. Pivotal partnered with Google to bring PKS (Pivotal Container Service to market) as a better way to manage and operate Kubernetes clusters in your own data center. This will soon also include the Knative project to bring the world of serverless to your own private cloud. The major cloud service providers as of 2018 are –

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft (the big three when it comes to cloud computing) are all investing heavily in serverless architecture to provide continuous service integration for businesses of all types. It has become an increasingly common subject to find guidebooks for on bookshelves, alongside the usual programming and networking books. If your companies are also going serverless, here are some providers to consider

Why Do Developers Use Serverless Architecture?

There are a number of reasons that developers choose to utilize serverless architecture, but there are also some situations where a traditional server-based approach will yield better results.

No Need to Worry About Maintenance

The traditional server-driven approach to cloud computing has always presented a number of inherent problems and challenges for businesses. For example, when applications and runtime environments are stored on remote servers, those servers need to be maintained. This maintenance includes ensuring that remote patches and security updates are applied and that any issues with availability are rectified as soon as possible. With serverless architecture, you only need to rely on your cloud provider to handle server maintenance. All of them now have a multitude of redundancies and other measures to ensure that any downtime is kept to the bare minimum.

Cost

For many businesses, the biggest selling point of serverless architecture is cost. When compared to the cost of renting out physical servers and maintaining them around the clock, serverless architecture offers impressive savings. In fact, serverless computing utilizes a completely different pricing model for traditional server architecture.

When renting a physical server, you have to pay according to the specifications of that server and how its available resources are allocated to you. In contrast, a serverless architecture provider will charge you based on the number of executions — a pay-per-resource scheme. The cloud provider will allocate you a certain timeframe, which will vary according to the package you choose. The amount of memory available to you during that time can also be adjusted if you need to be able to perform more executions. The more memory per millisecond that you require, the more expensive your package will be.

Environments

With a serverless cloud setup, it is just as easy to configure multiple different environments as it is to set up a single one. Because serverless computing occurs on a per-execution basis, it is easy to have different executions calling into play different architectures. This also means that you don’t have to worry about tracking the status and configurations of a whole bunch of different environments.

Why serverless is here to stay

Serverless architectures have a number of use cases, including web and mobile applications, data stream processing, Internet of Things (IoT) solutions and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions.

Like any new technological advancement, it will take time before serverless use cases become obvious and the ‘noise’ becomes the new standard. Those companies that have made early investments in serverless and event-driven computing see gains in productivity and velocity as well as reduced costs and resourcing needs.

The serverless architecture will continue to evolve to address more IT problems as it continues to shift the way developers think about programming and its relation to infrastructure.

It’s not as though developers love running infrastructure. It’s just been a necessity. Yet certainly the potential is there if the pieces fall into place and programmer momentum builds around this way of developing applications for it to really take off and for a startup ecosystem to follow.