Serverless is truly coming of age this year as demonstrated by the announcments last week at AWS Re:Invent.
Serverless uses new design patterns and FAAS or (Functions As A Service). Hosting software in the cloud usually means managing server infrastructure such as a virtual servers, operating systems and the connections to the Web that are required to allow your application to run.
With a serverless architecture using AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, Google Cloud Functions, the cloud provider takes care of the physical hardware, the operating system, the load balancer, the network connection to the user – all the undifferentiated heavy lifting. Not only will the raw compute work out cheaper than running virtual machines, the reduced management burden will allow you to focus on where you add value.
A serverless architecture is very different to a traditional on-premise application architecture or a cloud (container) architecture. It may not be feasible or cost effective for all your applications, but you should consider for any future application or as part of any migration strategy.
