Is Serverless Technology the Next Big Thing in Cloud Computing?

Businesses no longer need to bear the burden of expenses tied to dedicated cloud servers during periods of inactivity. Serverless technology has emerged as a practical solution, enabling businesses to allocate developers without the necessity of substantial spending on backend frameworks.

In this article, we will take a closer look at serverless technology, what are the advantages, and how it can change the future of backend cloud computing.

What is Serverless Technology?

Serverless technology is a cloud computing execution model that empowers developers to focus on project development and server management without the need to handle backend infrastructure complications of cloud framework. As a development project progresses, a developer may get overwhelmed with multiple responsibilities including coding, execution, and project maintenance. Therefore, IT leaders and corporations are required to take proactive steps to alleviate the burden on their developers, ensuring optimal results.

Generally, to execute serverless computing models, developers buy backend services from cloud vendors. As a developer-first technology, the main objective of introducing serverless architecture in software development is to help developers focus on writing code for various cloud platforms, and perform a defined role during development.

Rise of Serverless Technology

In recent years, the landscape of cloud computing has witnessed a transformative shift with the rapid rise of serverless computing. This paradigm shift in computing has become a cornerstone for many organizations, marking a new era of scalable, cost-effective, and highly efficient solutions. Serverless technology, also often known as Function-as-a-Service (FaaS), has gained immense popularity due to its ability to streamline development processes, enhance scalability, and optimize resource utilization.

Various research findings highlight the extensive impact of serverless architecture. According to industry reports, the global serverless architecture market size is projected to reach USD 21.99 billion by 2025, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.8% from 2018 to 2025. This robust growth is indicative of the technology’s increasing acceptance and its anticipated role in shaping the future of cloud computing.

Enterprises are leveraging serverless architecture to enhance their digital transformation initiatives. The ability to integrate with existing services and deploy microservices seamlessly aligns with the requirements of contemporary, modular architectures. This adaptability positions serverless as a cornerstone for building resilient and scalable systems in the age of digital innovation.

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Serverless Computing: A Cost-Effective Architecture for Application Development

With dedicated cloud servers, businesses are bound to pay for the entire tenure, even if the servers are running idle or not serving any traffic. And because cloud developers want to keep their applications up and running, they just can’t turn off the servers. This unnecessarily adds up to the operational cost.

With serverless solutions, developers are charged per execution, rather than the existence of the entire application. Herein, the code is divided into small functions and is deployed on independent containers, addressing incoming requests. These containers will be triggered to run function only on an incoming request and can be monitored, cloned, and scaled to any extent. The billing model of such architecture works on the number of requests and the time for which the container runs to execute functions, thus optimizing costs for the cloud business.

Both small and large-scale businesses can derive benefits from a serverless architecture. Some of the clearly visible advantages include:

• Curbing operational cost: For an application that is available 24*7*365 and receives only 3 requests, a server-less model is the best choice. Businesses will have to pay the entire year for dedicated cloud servers, and on the other hand, a serverless solution will require them to pay only for 3 requests.
• No upfront capacity planning required: With serverless architecture, a business doesn’t have to do capacity planning, unlike dedicated servers. Most of the serverless solutions are designed with built-in scalability provisions. So, if an application receives a great response in a short time, you don’t have to bother about infrastructure issues.
• No environment configuration required: With serverless architecture, no pre-configuration is required. Therefore, you don’t need dedicated sysadmin admins to install and configure the application environment.   
  

In addition to the aforementioned benefits, it helps startups to predict operational costs. Let’s take an example of an online service marketplace built with serverless architecture. The end user will make some requests to browse the service catalogue subscribe to a service and complete the transaction. After collecting some data with the help of an analysis tool, you can predict how much a single user costs (on average), and this unit cost will remain almost constant as your application grows in usage. Knowing how much a single user costs, will help to decide how much to charge for a service or to make other critical decisions.

Advantages of Serverless Technology in Cloud Computing

Serverless computing is quickly emerging as a viable option in cloud computing, effectively becoming a helpful service in assisting developers by reducing their workloads. There are various advantages of serverless technology, some of them are:

• Auto Scalability: Serverless empowers cloud vendors to automatically scale resources up or down. It enables vendors to scale codes that may not be running at a given time, effectively adjusting resources based on demand. This ensures efficient resource utilization and improves the effectiveness of applications.
• Improved Developer Productivity: Serverless effectively eliminates a chunk of unnecessary workload from the development team. As cloud vendors implement serverless computing, they take control of backend infrastructure and server maintenance. This helps development teams prioritize writing codes for applications and focus on development goals, becoming more productive.
  
  
• Reduced Time-to-Market (TTM):  Implementing serverless technology significantly reduces the duration of a software development lifecycle. Developers, primarily engaged in coding and application development, can address bugs, improve code more frequently, and complete projects in less time. Businesses can enhance profitability by implementing serverless computing and reducing time-to-market (TTM).
• Fault Tolerance: Fault tolerance allows software infrastructure to function uninterruptedly, even when one or more components of the framework fail. Serverless architectures are often implemented with built-in fault tolerance, which allows developers to distribute functions across multiple data centers, ensuring redundancy and resilience.
  
  
• Better Flexibility: Serverless computing offers flexibility to IT leaders, allowing applications to handle sudden spikes in traffic. This allows software infrastructure to remain in operation and responsive even when there is an increase in demand.

When Not to Choose a Serverless Architecture?

Serverless architecture has huge potential of scaling your application as per actual demand, in real time. However, you need to carefully evaluate your use cases before you jump to this model. Before you adopt serverless architecture for your application, make sure that you keep these factors into consideration:

• Serverless is not designed to handle long-running functions such as complex reporting and analytics. In such cases, you might end up paying more compared to dedicated servers, and that too, with a degraded performance.

• You need to be careful while selecting the right platform for serverless hosting because your application will be coupled with it. Also, you would need to modify your code to move away from the platform. Some of the popular Faas services include AWS Lambda, Google Functions, and Azure Functions.

• You also need to reconsider your deployment strategy to automate the deployment process, which otherwise consumes a lot of time and effort.

The potential of serverless architecture is huge, however, to realize maximum benefits, it is important to choose the right platform and follow the right strategy for development. 

Challenges and Concerns with Serverless Technology

Serverless computing, despite making a progressive impact on software development practices, presents notable challenges in cloud computing. Vendor lock-ins pose a significant concern as changing providers during serverless implementation can be complex, given variations in how vendors implement these services. This diversity makes it challenging for business leaders to find the right fit for their specific requirements, potentially leading to complications. Additionally, advanced monitoring tools are essential for enhancing infrastructure security in serverless computing.

Despite the challenges associated with serverless technology, including concerns about vendor lock-ins, advanced monitoring requirements, limited execution time, restricted control for developers, and cold start latency, it remains a superior option compared to other backend cloud technologies.

Leveraging Serverless Technology for Business Scalability

Most Serverless vendors provide database and storage services to their customers. Research shows about 80% of C-suite executives prefer workloads to be completely portable with minimal to no vendor lock-in to ensure the success of the projects. Recent developments in serverless computing by various open-source technologies such as Kubernetes, Istio, knative, and Paketo have allowed organizations to collaborate with vendors without having to deal with lock-in issues. Serverless architecture follows pay-as-you-go where users pay based on the actual execution of the code. This helps businesses manage costs as they only pay for the consumed resources.

A cloud vendor ensures an effective implementation of serverless computing to ensure scalability for a business with the following:

• Effective Resource Management: Prominent cloud vendors provide the entire back-end infrastructure required for implementing serverless technology. This allows vendors to manage cloud servers, storage, and networking, empowering development teams to keep coding as their primary focus.  
• Event-driven Architecture: Cloud vendors leverage event-driven architecture to offer scalable, flexible, and responsive systems within their cloud computing platforms. Cloud vendors can deploy this technology by implementing diverse events, ranging from data changes to user actions.
• Function-as-a-Service (FaaS): Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) is a cloud computing service that allows software developers to execute codes in response to different events, without managing complex microservices infrastructure. The cloud vendors provide Function-as-a-Service (FaaS), empowering IT leaders to implement individual functions without changing the entire application.  
• Pay-per-use Pricing: The pay-per-use pricing model allows cloud vendors to help optimize costs. It allows businesses to pay only for the actual execution rather than for pre-allocated resources. This cost-effective measure helps organizations reduce their implementation costs.
• Security and Compliance: Cloud vendors keep security and compliance as their topmost priority for implementing a serverless architecture for businesses. Cloud vendors ensure that security measures are deployed on multiple levels such as network security, data encryption, and access controls. Ensuring no compromise with security and compliance.

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How Serverless Technology is Different from Other Cloud Backend Models

Serverless computing is significantly different from other available cloud backend models. Let’s look at the following comprehensive comparison between serverless and some other major cloud backend models.

Serverless vs. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Infrastructure as a Service or simply IaaS is a business model that offers IT infrastructure such as storage, and network resources on a pay-as-you-go basis. In this model, the cloud operators pre-purchase units of capacity rather than buying services on demand. In this case, it becomes the responsibility of a technical team to assess the requirements to decide on a pricing plan.

On the other hand, serverless is implemented when it is necessary. Being an event-based architecture, serverless computing automatically runs the code once an event is triggered. The cloud vendor then asses the requirements and allocate resources for the specific code. This helps organizations in cost management as they only pay as long as the code is running.

ALSO READ: SaaS vs PaaS vs IaaS: Overview and Comparison

Serverless vs. Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Platform as a Service model allows organizations to build, deploy, and manage applications without dealing with the underlying infrastructure. Even though PaaS allows options for scalability, a developer intervention may still be required for efficient results. PaaS also allows cost optimization, as development teams can assess and buy monthly pricing based on requirements.

Serverless architecture allows scalability as well as flexibility depending on the user’s demands. It can better implement cost management as organizations pay only for the services that were used.

Serverless Technology vs. Backend as a Service (BaaS)

Even though the Backend as a Service model and serverless may seem quite similar in theory, the major difference between the two is scalability. Unlike serverless architecture, BaaS may not automatically scale an application due to request-per-second limitations. In addition to this, serverless is primarily an event-driven process, but BaaS is not event-driven and may need more cloud resources.  

What are the Applications of Serverless Computing for Cloud Businesses

Serverless computing offers various effective applications for cloud businesses. Let’s have a look at some of the use cases of serverless architecture in cloud computing.

1. Web and Mobile Applications

Many mobile and web applications use serverless technology to process backend tasks. For example, mobile applications can leverage event-driven technology in image or video processing, data transformation, and more, by configuring these tasks as events to trigger serverless functions.

2. Internet of Things (IoT) Applications

Thanks to scalability, cost-effectiveness, and easy deployment features, various Internet of Things services have endless benefits from serverless technology. For example, serverless functions are used to process and analyze massive data in no time.

For instance, consider a motion sensor device, leveraging an event-driven approach, lights can be turned on or off based on time duration or upon reading activities.  

3. Microservices Architecture

Microservices architecture and serverless technology can be used together to create scalable and flexible systems. Usually, it is used to build and deploy individual microservices within a larger microservices-based application.

For example, using the event-driven approach a microservice could be triggered by the creation of a new record in the database such as a message in a queue, or an HTTP request.

4. Chatbots and AI Integration

Various chatbots and AI integrations leverage this technology for scalability, cost-effectiveness, and ease of development.  For example, AI chatbots can create a serverless function that processes user inputs, interacts with databases, and performs other backend tasks.

What is the Future of Serverless Technology

Multiple reports suggest a bright future for serverless technology in cloud computing. In 2023, the worldwide market size for serverless architecture was valued at 10.1 billion USD. Additionally, serverless computing is expected to grow by over 19.84 billion USD in 2025.

Serverless computing is likely to see increased adoption across various industries as more organizations recognize its benefits, including cost-efficiency, scalability, and reduced operational complexity. This would provide organizations with greater flexibility and avoid vendor lock-in by enabling them to choose the best services from different providers. As serverless adoption grows, there will be an increased focus on enhancing the security of serverless applications. This includes improvements in identity and access management, runtime security, and addressing potential vulnerabilities specific to serverless architectures.

The future of serverless technology is anticipated to be of growing adoption by various industries, continuous improvement in technology, and enhanced application and security. All the factors easily signal a potentially crucial component in cloud computing architecture.

ALSO READ: Benefits of Software Development with Serverless Architecture

Scale Your Business with Serverless Cloud Technology

In recent years serverless technology has emerged as an advanced, and effective approach to application development and deployment. This software development method, characterized by its event-driven, on-demand execution model, is rapidly reshaping the way businesses plan, build, and scale their digital solutions.

The enthusiasm towards serverless computing comes from its ability to free developers from the intricacies of infrastructure and backend management, allowing them to focus solely on writing and developing code. As we move forward in this era of continuous digital innovation, the implications of serverless extend beyond just the operational efficiency; they also affect scalability, cost-effectiveness, and agility. From developers looking for swift solutions to enterprises optimizing resource utilization, the appeal of serverless computing is universal.

The surge in serverless adoption is not merely a trend but a fundamental shift in the way applications and software are developed, deployed, and scaled. Organizations and leaders alike must commit to staying at the forefront of this evolution, leveraging cloud vendor expertise to empower businesses with serverless solutions. This approach ensures seamless integration of unique workflows.

As serverless technology continues to mature, Daffodil remains steadfast in its commitment to delivering value-driven, innovative solutions, helping organizations harness the full potential of serverless architectures for unparalleled agility, cost-effectiveness, and scalability.

If you want to know more about how to go serverless, schedule a free 30-minute consultation with our chief architect, Gaurav Sharma.

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