Serverless? What image did you get after reading this? A thing/place with no servers? Sorry to say, but it’s not like that.
Major cloud service providers, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, offer serverless cloud technology, which was used by over 50% of the major CSP users worldwide in 2022.
But what is this technology spiking at a CAGR of 22.8% and is estimated to reach a staggering 50.86 billion by 2031?
We will uncover the mystery for you!!
In this blog, I have discussed this disruptive technology’s benefits, challenges, business impacts, and industry-specific transformations. So, wait no more; let’s uncover serverless cloud computing!!
What Can Businesses Do with Serverless Cloud Technology?
Serverless cloud computing helps you run your codes, software, or applications without the need to take care of servers. Big CSPs (cloud service providers) will take care of the maintenance of servers and deployment on your behalf. Serverless (a misnomer) cloud technology is a cloud computing execution model. Its name, being serverless, doesn’t mean that there are no servers for deploying your codes. There are servers, but cloud service providers, such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure, provide these. However, the catch is that you, as a user, don’t need to maintain the provisioning or infrastructure of the servers.
Since the launch of early serverless platforms like “Google App Engine” in 2008, serverless tech has evolved at unprecedented speeds. In the early days, companies had to buy physical servers for operations. Nowadays, the need for physical servers is negligible because of this technology’s immense benefits to individuals and businesses. Let’s uncover what businesses can do with serverless cloud technology:
Integrate Unrivaled Data Processing: Serverless computing can help businesses to enable fast data processing. This feature can be used for companies that use virtual assistants or chatbots in their applications or websites.
Autoscale Websites & API: Autoscaling (a vital feature of serverless computing) can reduce businesses’ costs significantly. With the scaling as per demand/computation feature, users can autoscale websites according to their requirements without paying extra for idle times.
DevOps Automation: DevOps automation refers to automating the development and operations elements. For example, after you have written the code for your app, the tests, documentation updates, or deployment to production are all done automatically.
Develop Microservices: Businesses can create modular, independently deployable services for specific functions.
Reduce Operational Costs: Wouldn’t it be better to pay for only the time your app or website has computed? Serverless computing does exactly this for businesses, reducing costs that incur operations.
Benefits of Serverless Cloud Technology
Serverless cloud computing has overpowered traditional cloud-based or server-centric infrastructure with its advantages; let’s discover some of them:
Saves you Tons of Space & Costs
Users or businesses don’t need to store, configure, or maintain the servers, which saves space and manpower. Moreover, applying the as-you-compute model aids in using the servers and processes when the application or website is being computed. That means saving money by not paying for servers when the website is not being used and paying when there is traffic.
Servers Maintenance: Vendor’s Worry
Your vendor, i.e., the provider that gives you cloud services, is responsible for maintaining and configuring the servers located in the data centers. As a developer or company, you don’t have to stress out about deployment or managing the complexities of servers; your vendor will do it. This advantage of serverless cloud computing allows developers to focus more on coding and business logic.
Decrease Latency
Latency? What does it mean? It means the time it takes for a serverless function to execute. In this technology, the application is not hosted on the origin server. So, it is possible that the app deployment can be done near the end user. This deployment near the end user eventually reduces latency because the user’s requests will no longer travel to the origin server.
Leveraging Integrated Services
Cloud providers provide integrated services, such as application logging and monitoring, content delivery networks, CI/CD tools, etc. These services work best with serverless computing and greatly benefit businesses and individuals.
Scalability at Fingertips
Let’s take an example of a serverless shopping website. This site doesn’t get massive traffic normally, but its traffic spikes on a Black Friday sale. In this scenario, the website will not go down or crash and will be responsive because it’s serverless. This automatic scaling adjusts servers to handle fluctuating or sudden traffic, ensuring consistent performance.
Serverless Cloud Technology Challenges and Considerations
While it offers dominant advantages over the earlier technologies, serverless computing has its challenges. So, don’t hurry to shift to serverless before considering these points:
Security Concerns
Five matchsticks are strong when combined, but a single matchstick could be broken easily. The same is true with serverless, as separate functions of an application offer higher risks of cyberattacks, whereas unified functions don’t. Moreover, the provider takes security measures to protect data, servers, and credentials, sometimes not meeting the app owner’s expectations.
Additionally, some providers use a single server to run the functions of several companies’ websites; this phenomenon is known as ‘multitenancy.’ Multitenancy can lead to data exposure of one company to other companies. These security concerns can occur while implementing serverless cloud computing. Companies can safeguard their serverless cloud environments by aligning cyber security services with function-level security, API protection, IAM, etc.
Risks of Vendor Lock-in
In serverless computing, every back-end service is provided by a single provider, and each cloud provider offers different features and functionalities to meet the business needs of diversified users. This becomes problematic when the business owner wants to switch to a different provider for different requirements. This cloud migration from one provider to another becomes difficult, expensive, and requires high effort, leading to vendor lock-in.
“Cold Start” – “Warm Start”
Every user will not utilize every function of the website; some of the codes become unused. So, when these codes are used after a while, they require a boot. This starting of the idle codes is known as a cold start. Cold start is a term used to describe the request of idle code, i.e., a function that hasn’t been used in a while. However, the request for ready-to-go or constantly used codes is known as a warm start. Cold start affects performance as it takes time to execute, making serverless computing unsuitable for applications with critical response time.
Ineffective for Long-Term Processes
Applications or websites such as Google, Facebook, or Instagram will be used for a long time. For websites or applications to be used over a long period, serverless computing will not be a good option. Because it charges for the time the code is running, and if some apps include long-running processes, switching to serverless will cost them hefty amounts of money and will be inefficient.
Limited Monitoring and Debugging Challenges
With serverless, which centralizes the servers to the provider and gives limited visibility, monitoring becomes limited, difficult, and complicated. Also, because all the back-end processes happen on the provider’s servers, and the application has smaller and separate functions, this leads to limited visibility, and developers can face challenges in debugging. Being unable to replicate the condition that led to an issue also comes as a big challenge for developers, leading to poor testing.
Industry-Specific Transformations with Serverless
Serverless computing’s features can be used in several industries. Some of the sectors with the highest applications are as follows:
HealthCare
- Analysis of Patient Data
- Medical Image Processing
- Telemedicine Platforms (Teladoc and Sesame)
Infusing serverless technology assists in reducing operational costs for healthcare organizations, such as hospitals and clinics, by autoscaling computable resources as per needs.
Financial Sector
- Detecting frauds in the system in real-time
- Executing automatic trading (creating buy and sell orders without emotional biases)
- Calculating whether the borrower will pay back or not (credit risk assessment)
A bank will apply serverless computing in some real-time operations. These operations include analyzing the transactional patterns of account holders, which will help eradicate skeptical activities, and that too without the hecticness of managing a server.
Entertainment/Media Industry
- Content delivery and streaming
- Organized data related to user engagement via specialized analytics
- Automatically accept guidelines that align with the content and reject the other.
Converting videos from one format to another anytime and anywhere (video content transcoding), fine-tuning storage, and processing costs. These are a few functions that media companies leverage from serverless computing.
Use Cases and Examples
Serverless shapes our lives by having roots in many industries, enhancing productivity, entertainment, and beverage experience (true!). Let’s uncover and see how it shapes our lives:
Netflix: Serverless computing and its functions allow you to access your favorite binge-watched movies and exciting TV series on demand.
Coca-Cola: Their smart vending machines, used across the country and countries, also use serverless infrastructure.
IDEXX: IDEXX, a global leader in pet healthcare innovation, uses AWS’s data lake architecture to support data-driven clinical decision-making.
FINRA: The financial industry regulatory authority utilizes this computing technology to transform and analyze huge amounts of financial data. This has reduced their costs during low-volume periods and improved their processing.
iRobot: The company that developed the famous vacuum cleaner ‘Roomba’ uses serverless for data analytics, IoT integration, and real-time responses.
Conclusion
Following its predecessors (Physical servers, VMs, and containers) and utilizing unrivaled and ever-evolving technology, serverless computing will evolve and will have advanced successors. As a developer or business owner, you must analyze its challenges and advantages and determine whether it aligns with your objectives.
Each industry will have different prerequisites and necessities. Understand the benefits and elements where serverless computing lacks (key considerations) mentioned above and decide whether your industry-specific business needs to shift to serverless. Aligning cloud consulting services with performance tuning, migration planning, vendor selection, and more helps a consultant better guide businesses toward serverless adoption.
Author Bio:
Anirudh is a content writer specializing in technical concepts related to the digital economy and finance, such as AI, SEO, cloud computing, and more. A curious learner who has been writing on Medium, LinkedIn, and other reputable writing platforms, aims for excellence and endeavors for personal and professional growth.
