What Is Serverless Computing?

‘Serverless’ is a term that has gained popularity in recent times, among the biggest tech industries. If you are an owner of a business that deals with app development then you can hugely benefit from serverless computing.

Serverless architecture has been hyped constantly by a number of cloud vendors like AWS, in multiple conferences and seminars, across the globe, which automatically gives you the idea about why this technology has become so relevant today.

As per definition, serverless computing refers to a kind of cloud-based computing, where the cloud provider takes the responsibility of managing the provision and allocation of servers.

When you are free from the duty of managing your infrastructure, you can invest your time on your particular business goals – This also allows you to focus on the core aspects of your business.

Since the introduction of serverless computing, a number of cloud service providers have found their place in the market.

Few of the Most Popular Cloud Service Providers are:

• Azure Functions
• Aws Lambda
• IBM OpenWhisk
• Google Cloud Functions
• Iron Functions

Currently, more and more businesses are opting for serverless computing owing to the varied advantages that it offers businesses against traditional computing. Here’s a quick look at how these two computing systems are different from each other and which is more advantageous for you.

Which is Better? Serverless or Traditional Computing Architecture?

Your Expense

The most obvious advantage that serverless computing has over traditional computing, is the fact that it saves you money. Gone are the days when you had to spend money on maintaining your servers all seven days of the week and check for errors on a regular basis. The price per second, changes depending upon the amount of memory you require. Thus, in this case serverless computing clearly beats the traditional one.

Setting up an environment

In the past, as a business owner, you needed to set up a devkit, arrange the staging and start the production machines. Today, while making use of serverless computing, setting up different environments for you is as simple as setting up a single one, as you pay for each execution. In this case, even, serverless computing scores the point over traditional computing.

Scaling

Scaling of serverless computing, as opposed to traditional computing, is automatic and seamless. In this case, as well, serverless computing is better than the traditional one.

After a detailed comparison between serverless and traditional computing, you should be informed about one of the most popular applications of serverless architecture, Functions as a Service (FaaS).

FaaS or ‘Functions as a Service’

FaaS is a kind of application of serverless architectures, where an individual business logic or an individual function is deployed by engineers. It begins within a few milliseconds and processes requests periodically.

Following are the Three Major Characteristics of FaaS:

• It manages your servers.
• It bills you based on your invocation.
• It is instantly scalable and driven by events.

Benefits that You can Derive from Serverless Computing as a Business Owner

• As the cost is incurred based on your number of executions and is measured in milliseconds instead of hours, your overall computing costs go down drastically.
• It increases your ability to adapt to change, as it involves the delivery of smaller units, which in turn speeds up the delivery of new features to the market.
• You will not need to spend extra money on hiring infrastructure engineers.
• Whenever you need your developer to update a particular app, he will be able to do with almost no hassle as codes are not needed to be manually uploaded to the servers and neither there is any need for backend configuration.
• As a business owner, your consumers will be satisfied with your decision of choosing serverless computing over the traditional one. As the hosting of a particular application can be done from anywhere and no origin server is required, the codes can run with lower latency.

Although serverless computing is the most modern form of computing, it comes with its own list of disadvantages.

A Few Drawbacks of Using Serverless Computing

• The vendor handles the operations in case of serverless computing – which basically means that whenever your developer works in a serverless environment, he will not have any system control. Whenever he implements APIs, he is bound to get unwanted API upgrades.
• Cost alteration is another drawback that serverless computing is characterized by. Whenever you are about to sign a new contract with your client and your work involves serverless computing, then the particular client will pay you on the basis of the quality of your previous cloud-based projects. This increases the risk of you getting paid less from certain clients.
• Sometimes, the security aspect is compromised when you are operating your business, using serverless computing. As large numbers of components are put to use, the risk of hazardous attacks is exponentially higher, and because you will have limited control, you will not be notified about it.

The Bottomline

In conclusion, as a business owner, you need to keep in mind that you must maintain your pace with changing times and technology. You must make sure that your business processes are updated on a regular basis. Serverless computing will allow you to fulfill the requirements mentioned above, and on top of that keep your developers and consumers happy.