A new generation of cloud computing before business IT infrastructure is here. Its name, you ask. Serverless computing. But don’t be fooled by the term ‘serverless’. Servers are still needed for all computational operations. Where ‘serverless’ comes into play is that your business doesn’t need a physical server for running its code. Code executions are outsourced to an external cloud provider such as AWS Lambda, IBM Cloud Functions or Microsoft Azure Functions.
So how can your business benefit from serverless architecture? Here are some of the outstanding features:
Shorter Time to Market
The development time of your applications will be much shorter using serverless computing. Your serverless cloud provider takes care of infrastructure, setup and capacity planning. All you have to do is effectively plan, design and develop your applications.
Pay As You Go
Currently, you are paying for virtual servers or owning a data centre whether you use them or not. Servers need to be always-on, otherwise, you won’t have a functioning service. Your servers will be most active between 8 am and 8 pm – at other times they are close to being idle – but, of course, you are still paying. Serverless changes this all – you only pay for the time that you use.
Variable Costs
Fixed costs are what they are. You pay for them, irrespective of output. Traditional servers force you to have a fixed cost – whether you use them or not. With serverless, the name of the game changes. Fixed costs become variable costs. If you have 10 million user requests in one day, you might pay AWS £100. If you have zero requests the next day, you’ll owe AWS nothing.
Reuse Components
Certain components of different applications are developed over and over again. Payment processing or user authentication are good examples of this. Serverless gives you the ability to develop product services ads independent components. These components can be mixed and matched for different applications. This significantly will reduce your development time and effort.
Improved Stability
You will probably have many applications bundled into a single block at the moment. Should one service crash, then they will all come tumbling down. With serverless that issue is negated. Services supported by a serverless environment are separate and therefore much, much more stable.
