Serverless is a new world of software development and computing and one that is growing very fast. Serverless has many advantages including flexibility, scalability and high availability. Moreover, serverless apps terminate instances based on event triggers and money and time is not wasted on the development and implementation of pre-provisioned apps that are often idle or unused.
In 2017, the global serverless architecture market was valued at approximately £3 billion. Forecasters predict that by 2025 this worth will grow to in excess of £20 billion – and now we are talking big money. Serverless computing and architecture top Gartner’s list of the top 10 infrastructure and operations trends for 2019.
Typical applications manage all client-based and server-based infrastructure, logic and commands within a closed environment. By contrast, serverless applications separate the application’s functional components into individual and stand-alone modules. These insular components, or black boxes if you like, are scalable to meet both demands and satisfy KPIs.
With serverless computing, different modules function independently as well as cohesively. For example, if you were shopping for chocolates online with a vendor using serverless, your browser could take to their API gateway, you will then have the option of being driven to purchase function taking you to the purchase database or the search function takes you to the product database. A legacy application will take you to the vendor server and then to the database only. Clearly serverless is much quicker and promotes overall cybersecurity.
Typical applications lending themselves to serverless architecture include auto-scaling websites, SaaS integration and advanced image and video service integration. Serverless even works with Amazon Web Services.
Coming up next time – how your business can benefit from serverless computing.
