23 Oct Serverless Computing: Emerging Trend Snapshot by InfoTech Consulting Services

What is it?

Serverless Computing is an advanced and rapidly growing service of the Cloud. It is a software design pattern where applications are hosted by a third-party service, which eliminates the need for server software & hardware management. Where it deviates
in our traditional understanding of cloud is that in a serverless architecture, applications are broken down into individual functions that can be scaled or invoked as required.

This is one of the reasons why Serverless Computing is sometimes called Function as a Service (FaaS).

Many PaaS, Platform as a Service, offer the same benefits as serverless computing. However due to the unique deployment of Serverless, the scalability of one’s application & the ratio of cost to function is where Serverless outperforms PaaS.

What is this trend happening?

Cloud computing has been revolutionizing technology for over a decade, and serverless computing is the next iteration of it. The industry is finding it far more efficient & cost-effective to use serverless computing – up to ten times more efficient that standard cloud. In traditional cloud resource flexibility is triggered on benchmark metrics and scheduled loads and human intervention is required with resource provisioning and scaling decisions. This results in overprovisioning and unexpected cloud spend. Serverless applications are built with stackable pieces of code so they are stateless operations with no context or history. Functions trigger response and actions in real-time with no provisioning necessary. This is critical in a world which is increasingly becoming mobile first. Each mobile app has specialized data and resource needs. In most mobility use cases, the information delivered to an application can be extracted and broken into lightweight, specific tasks. Serverless applications can deliver the best scale, experience, and service.

What are the benefits?

Faster, stronger, better – that’s what serverless architecture delivers, and that’s what every company, in an era where agility is a business advantage, needs. Because serverless computing allows individual functions to be invoked & scaled as & when required it is very cost efficient – with savings in both human resources and computing power. Serverless Computing is also charged on the basis of usage as opposed to flat rates on virtual machines. A serverless approach also means decreased times to market – instead of weeks and months, apps can now be created in hours and days. They also can be triggered to integrate with similar apps using logic enabling massive scale.

What are the challenges?

Cold starts are a problem serverless vendors need to address. A cold start occurs when a function is invoked after not being used for an extended period of time. This results in invocation latency. This affects the user experience when the backend takes lot of time to respond the user queries.

Every leading tech brings its own unique security challenges. Serverless is no different. Due to miss-configurations and erroneous settings, serverless architectures have been susceptible to information leaks. The user-centric interface, ease and accessibility of serverless functions has been a selling point, however with such ease comes the problem of bad code hygiene in which carelessness can lead to security flaws.