Have you been following the cloud services industry lately?
If yes, you would surely know how popular serverless hosting and Function as a Service (FaaS) have become since their inception.
If oblivious, here is it:
Serverless Computing is a Cloud Computing Model wherein applications depend on third-party services (Backend as a Service – BaaS) or custom codes run on transient containers (Function as a Service – FaaS).
Traditionally, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google, and IBM provide the infrastructure as well as maintenance activities identified with dedicated servers.
Due to this reason, your time, as well as your resources are freed from the challenges imposed by your core operating system or server configuration.
Now, businesses like yours can solely focus on developing, deploying, and managing your applications as well as software with serverless cloud computing. How cool is that?
For the ones who have been following this indelible trend, I am sure you would know that:
- The serverless market size is estimated to reach 7.72 billion by 2021.
- The compounded growth rate of serverless computing sums up to 75%.
- The active users of Amazon Web Services (AWS) exceed 1 million.
- AWS offers about 175 fully functional services through a dynamic ecosystem.
- About 63% of users admitted that flexibility in scaling is their primary reason to switch to serverless computing.
You’ll also know that even though it is termed as “serverless,” servers are still in use for all the traditional functions including storing data, deploying software, and so on.
However, what you might not know is that if you approach the right serverless service provider, you’ll no longer have to get into the hassles of server acquisition, server management, software updates, and software fixing.
Why go serverless?
The next obvious question would be why to go serverless when servers are to be used anyway. Here’s the answer in simple terms:
When you create an app or software that runs on a server, you might have to manage the server efficiently. If not maintained well, the servers crash, and all your efforts go in vain.
On the other hand, if you go serverless, the service provider takes care of everything and, all you got to do is focus on the app or software.
Here are a few key benefits of going serverless:
It’ll help you start fast.
When you hand over the management of the servers to your chosen provider, you get time to let your application reach your target audience faster.
It’ll cut down on your overhead.
By refraining from server management, you could save a good amount of management costs. Based on your usage model, in serverless, you only pay for the compute time you use. Also, the faster you launch your product in the market, the higher your revenue, isn’t it?
In a nutshell, you’ll spend more time on your business rather than on the infrastructure.
So, is serverless the future?
The roads to going serverless were never easy. It took quite a long time for people to adapt to this microservice architecture from the traditional monolithic architecture. Even today, we can rightly say that serverless is in its infancy and, it would take time to get completely into the zone of serverless computing.
Although companies started adapting to the microservice architecture, running multiple servers in different environments turned out to be way more expensive.
It is when serverless revolutionized the way businesses take place by streamlining all such complexities.
After all, serverless computing is a cloud computing execution model wherein the cloud vendor dynamically runs and manages the servers.
- Serverless computing promises three prime features:
- Rest from managing servers.
- Get support for incessant scaling, load balancing, and so on.
- Avail of the pay-as-you-go model (sub-second metering).
Serverless computing can potentially change the way businesses operate with a comparatively faster, smarter, and harder way of working while reducing operational costs significantly. Many big players in app development have already switched to serverless computing. This technology promises businesses of being game-changer.
Serverless computing is one step ahead of cloud computing.
Food for Thought
Amazon published a case study on their website describing how a London-based global media company, Guardian News & Media, used Lambda to streamline their services and improve customer service.
Amazon also published a blog on their website highlighting how the University of York could increase agility, cut down costs, and better manage its applications.
The serverless technology, however, as mentioned earlier, is in its adolescence. It does have a few drawbacks and much room for improvement. However, considering the ever-expanding demand for leveraging, scaling, and spinning applications as well as services, the cloud technology must gen up and, for that, serverless is the go-to solution.
- There is no doubt in saying that serverless is truly going to be the future of the next-generation technology for cloud services.
- The software architecture will eventually be expected to take the big step and welcome serverless technology.
- Significant numbers of experienced small, medium and enterprise businesses have acknowledged the benefits of going serverless.
- There’s no sign of serverless taking the road back. Besides, it is expanding and growing while you read this.
The future of serverless seems to be quite promising.
Have you gone serverless yet?
