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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.


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Serverless

Add It Up: Container Deployment Still Outpaces ‘Serverless’

2 Aug 2018 10:22am, by Lawrence E Hecht

Serverless / Contributed

Serverless and Workflows: The Present and the Future

31 Jul 2018 12:19pm, by Dmitri Zimine

Serverless

Take Our Survey on Serverless Technologies

31 Jul 2018 6:29am, by Libby Clark

Serverless

Cocktails and Dreams: A Programming Layer for the Cloud

31 Jul 2018 3:00am, by Marc Holmes

Serverless

Serverless, the Company, Adds Tooling to Its Namesake Technology

30 Jul 2018 8:46am, by Susan Hall

Serverless

Serverless Testing in Production

30 Jul 2018 6:00am, by Mark Boyd

Serverless

The New Stack Context: Knative and Google Next

27 Jul 2018 1:03pm, by Libby Clark

Security / Serverless / Contributed

Your Security Just Might Kill Your Serverless

27 Jul 2018 8:49am, by Hillel Solow

Serverless

Parity Check: Serverless Moves from Beta to Business Use

26 Jul 2018 8:40am, by Lawrence E Hecht

Serverless

With Knative, Google Brings Multicloud Serverless to the Enterprise

25 Jul 2018 1:56pm, by Joab Jackson

Kubernetes / Serverless

Google Next Brings Kubernetes, Serverless, and VM-Like Isolation to the Cloud

24 Jul 2018 9:48am, by Alex Handy

Cloud Native / Serverless

WSO2 CEO Tyler Jewell: Ballerina and the End of Middleware

18 Jul 2018 8:47am, by Joab Jackson

Serverless

Cutting Through the Hype: When Serverless Works and When It Doesn’t

18 Jul 2018 6:00am, by Rob Zuber

Image of a nucleus

Serverless

Migrating to Serverless in a Production Setting

16 Jul 2018 10:41am, by Mark Boyd

Serverless

Talking Serverless with Oracle’s Chad Arimura

11 Jul 2018 1:15pm, by Alex Handy

Security / Serverless

Love Serverless, Remember Security

9 Jul 2018 6:00am, by B. Cameron Gain

Kubernetes / Serverless

Serverless Trends 6 Months into 2018 Still Point to Confusion

5 Jul 2018 12:51pm, by Alex Handy

Serverless

5 Ways Serverless Changes Software Development

2 Jul 2018 8:45am, by Mark Boyd

Development / Serverless

Microsoft Azure’s Durable Functions for Serverless JavaScript

28 Jun 2018 9:52am, by Mary Branscombe

binoculars on a bench

Serverless

7 Essential DevOps Tools to Maintain Serverless Operations

25 Jun 2018 11:36am, by Mark Boyd

serverless cake wreck

Development / Serverless

Tackling Operational Serverless and Cross-Cloud Compatibility

21 Jun 2018 3:08pm, by Alex Handy

Kubernetes / Serverless

Iguazio’s Nuclio Serverless Software Aims to Outrun AWS

19 Jun 2018 2:26pm, by TC Currie

Kubernetes / Serverless

Red Hat’s Approach to ‘Functions as a Service’

18 Jun 2018 1:50pm, by Alex Handy

Serverless

Serverless Migration Strategies: What to Know Before Making the Leap

18 Jun 2018 6:00am, by B. Cameron Gain

Development / Serverless

Wicket 8: What’s New and What’s Next for the Server-Side Java Web Framework

11 Jun 2018 10:36am, by Susan Hall

Serverless

Serverless Impacts on Business, Process and Culture

11 Jun 2018 8:53am, by Mark Boyd

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