SEARCH (ENTER TO SEE ALL RESULTS)

POPULAR TOPICS

Contributed
News
Analysis
The New Stack Makers
Tutorial
Podcast
Research
Feature
Science
Off-The-Shelf Hacker
Skip to content
  • Podcasts
    • TNS @Scale Series
    • TNS Analysts Round Table
    • TNS Context Weekly News
    • TNS Makers Interviews
    • All Podcasts
  • Events
  • Ebooks
    • DevOps
    • DevSecOps
    • Docker Ecosystem
    • Kubernetes Ecosystem
    • Microservices
    • Serverless
    • Storage
    • All Ebooks
  • Newsletter
  • Sponsorship
  • • • •
    • Podcasts
      • TNS @Scale Series
      • TNS Analysts Round Table
      • TNS Context Weekly News
      • TNS Makers Interviews
      • All Podcasts
    • Events
    • Ebooks
      • Machine Learning
      • DevOps
      • Serverless
      • Microservices
      • Kubernetes Ecosystem
      • Docker Ecosystem
      • All Ebooks
    • Newsletter
    • Sponsorship
Skip to content
  • Architecture
    • Cloud Native
    • Containers
    • Edge/IoT
    • Microservices
    • Networking
    • Serverless
    • Storage
  • Development
    • Development
    • Cloud Services
    • Data
    • Machine Learning
    • Security
  • Operations
    • CI/CD
    • Culture
    • DevOps
    • Kubernetes
    • Monitoring
    • Service Mesh
    • Tools
 

Serverless

▾ 1 MINUTE READ — CLOSE

Serverless is Where Application Infrastructure is Headed

Experts and visionaries in distributed systems believe serverless technologies are the future of application architecture — the next logical advancement after containers and microservices. And pockets of leading edge companies in industries such as media, travel and finance have already embraced serverless as a means to dramatically reduce operational overhead and streamline the DevOps cycle, while increasing scalability and resiliency.

“The future will be containerized and those containers will run on serverless infrastructure.”

— Brendan Burns, distinguished engineer at Microsoft and guest contributor on The New Stack.

Serverless functions, also often known as Functions as a Service (FaaS), are runtimes which execute applications but do not store data. They are the microservices of microservices, Adron Hall joked in an episode of The New Stack Analysts. And they are called based on an event that happens in the cloud.

In this model, organizations only pay for the resources they use — actual consumption — rather than pre-purchased services based on guesswork. The server management and capacity planning decisions are completely hidden from the developer, thus the term “serverless.” The servers are fully abstracted away. Instead, a cloud provider, like Amazon Web Services (AWS Lambda), Google Cloud (Google Cloud Functions) or Microsoft Azure (Azure Functions) dynamically manages the assignment and distribution of resources.

Serverless Benefits are Many

The benefits of serverless architectures are many. Pay-as-you go services have a cost benefit, but the true value lies in organizational efficiency. Developers spend more time writing code that directly benefits the business and IT spends less time maintaining old infrastructure. And it takes less time for developers to get code into production.

But the Serverless Ecosystem is Still Developing

Still, there are many challenges to serverless adoption. Serverless requires a new approach to development and a new set of a tools based on a DevOps culture. Latency and high performance can also become an issue in the cloud, as can monitoring, debugging and security.

The relatively limited ecosystem around serverless technologies, combined with the challenges of operating in the cloud, have led many organizations to approach serverless cautiously and in a phased adoption. Serverless code can be used alongside code deployed in traditional styles, such as a monolith or microservices — which makes it ideal to begin experimenting with for any number of use cases.


A newsletter digest of the week’s most important stories & analyses.

Do you also want to be notified of the following?
We don’t sell or share your email. By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Cloud Services / Serverless / Sponsored / Contributed

The Central Tenets of Serverless Infrastructure

1:00pm, by James Kobielus

traffic at night

API Management / Microservices / Serverless

AsyncAPI Looks to Unify API Workflow under Linux Foundation

7 Apr 2021 4:00pm, by Mike Melanson

Serverless / Sponsored / Contributed

What Is Serverless-First in 2021?

26 Mar 2021 11:00am, by David Anderson

Culture / Serverless / Technology

A Guide to Clubhouse: Is Anybody Listening?

26 Mar 2021 10:23am, by Jennifer Riggins

Development / Linux / Serverless

This Week in Programming: Rust (Likely) Headed for Linux Kernel’s Development Branch

20 Mar 2021 6:00am, by Mike Melanson

Data / Development / Serverless

Best Friends: Harnessing Data to Save Lost Cats and Dogs

17 Mar 2021 4:00am, by Susan Hall

Cloud Services / Serverless / Sponsored / Contributed

Stop Talking About Multicloud and Hybrid Cloud and Start Talking About Integration

15 Mar 2021 8:38am, by Mark Hinkle

Serverless / Sponsored / Contributed

How Serverless Will Help Us Evolve in a Post-Pandemic World

12 Mar 2021 12:00pm, by James Kobielus

Data / Open Source / Serverless / Sponsored / Contributed

The Serverless Database You Really Want

8 Mar 2021 8:39am, by Patrick McFadin

Kubernetes / Serverless / Sponsored / Contributed

Avoid the Serverless Speed Trap

5 Mar 2021 11:56am, by Mark Hinkle

API Management / Security / Serverless / Sponsored

How to Secure Web Applications in a Static and Dynamic World

3 Mar 2021 1:29pm, by Alex Williams and B. Cameron Gain

Data / Microservices / Serverless

Datastax Astra Offers a Serverless Option for Cassandra

1 Mar 2021 3:00pm, by Mike Melanson

API Management / Data / Serverless / Contributed

How Daily.Dev Built a Low-Budget Serverless Scraping Pipeline for Online Articles

26 Feb 2021 9:43am, by Ido Shamun

Data / Serverless / Sponsored / Contributed

How to Ensure Your Serverless Database Stays Serverless

24 Feb 2021 11:00am, by Andrew C. Oliver

Development / Serverless

6 Web Development Predictions for 2021

4 Jan 2021 7:00am, by Richard MacManus

Development / Serverless

Up the Stack: A Year-End Review of Serverless, Jamstack and JavaScript

28 Dec 2020 10:47am, by Richard MacManus

Development / Serverless

AWS Serverless Express Is All Grown Up Now

17 Dec 2020 3:00am, by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Data / Development / Serverless

Stargate Data Gateway Brings REST, JSON, GraphQL APIs to Cassandra

14 Dec 2020 6:00am, by Mike Melanson

Microservices / Monitoring / Serverless / Sponsored / Contributed

Debugging Microservices in the Cloud

8 Dec 2020 12:03pm, by Emrah Samdan

Containers / Edge / IoT / Serverless

Koyeb Combines Functions and Containers in Its Serverless Engine

7 Dec 2020 1:03pm, by Mike Melanson

Monitoring / Serverless

Lightstep’s OpenTelemetry Extension Helps Make Lambda Telemetry Data More Accessible

7 Dec 2020 3:00am, by B. Cameron Gain

Cloud Services / Data / Serverless

Amazon Web Services Wants You to Migrate off Legacy Databases

4 Dec 2020 12:39pm, by Richard MacManus

Cloud Services / Containers / Serverless

Adoption of AWS Lambda Serverless Stalls

3 Dec 2020 9:01am, by Lawrence E Hecht

Containers / DevOps / Serverless

AWS Proton, a Shared Services Library for Cloud Native Resources

3 Dec 2020 8:07am, by Joab Jackson

Open Source / Serverless / Tools / Sponsored

SaltStack’s Open Source Future Under VMware

1 Dec 2020 2:00pm, by Alex Williams and B. Cameron Gain

Cloud Native / Serverless / Sponsored / Contributed

Lightbend’s Jonas Bonér on How to Minimize Cloud Native Complexity

30 Nov 2020 3:00am, by Klint Finley

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Architecture

  • Cloud Native
  • Containers
  • Edge/IoT
  • Microservices
  • Networking
  • Serverless
  • Storage

Development

  • Cloud Services
  • Data
  • Development
  • Machine Learning
  • Security

Operations

  • CI/CD
  • Culture
  • DevOps
  • Kubernetes
  • Monitoring
  • Service Mesh
  • Tools

The New Stack

  • Ebooks
  • Podcasts
  • Events
  • Newsletter
  • About / Contact
  • Sponsors
  • Sponsorship
  • Disclosures
  • Contributions
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • Soundcloud
  • LinkedIn
  • Slideshare
  • RSS

© 2021 The New Stack. All rights reserved.

Privacy Policy. Terms of Use.