When (and why) to go 'Serverless'

Technology proponents have been quick to embrace cloud computing.

In particular, serverless architecture has been grabbing a lot of headlines over the last few years. Back in 2017, the serverless market was already estimated at more than $3B.

As we are rolling into a new decade, this technology is expected to grow up to $20B by 2025.

But, what is serverless architecture?

Hosting a software application in the online space always requires a server where you host your application along with a database. 

Serverless doesn’t mean operating an application without a server, it means that you can operate it without having to manage a server.

The provider, in this case, manages, supplies, and maintains backend services on an as-used basis. A company that receives computing resources from a serverless vendor pays only for the used resources.

With the serverless architecture, infrastructure management tasks such as provisioning and patching are handled by AWS, so you can focus on writing code that caters to the end-user.

Other advantages of serverless computing are:

• Better observability
• Faster deployments
• Increased flexibility
• Accelerated innovation
• Reduced architecture costs

Should You Go Serverless?

Companies and developers who need fast-paced and rapidly evolving applications that require quick scaling will definitely benefit from this technology.

Unlike traditional services like EC2, serverless computing scales well with your increasing load.

While EC2 scaling usually presupposes a lot of steps, serverless allows for easy and hassle-free scaling. That is, if your serverless app is suitable for container size and runtime memory limits, you are all set for scaling.

Serverless computing will also minimize expenses for applications that experience irregular operations with rush hours replacing times of little to no traffic. Most serverless technologies will charge you based on usages like API Calls or Function invocation.

It means that the application rest period is not billed, which lowers the expenses for running a server. On top of it, there are zero maintenance costs.

Also, developers who want to build client-heavy applications where most of the logic is handed over to the client will require at least a partially serverless architecture, since it will facilitate moving some processes out of the origin server.

Popular serverless architecture use cases include but are not limited to:

• High-traffic websites
• Multimedia processing applications
• Mobile backends
• Internet of Things
• Automate CI/CD pipelines
• Big Data applications

Overall, serverless is a viable option for variable and irregular loads, developer productivity, and inherent auto-scalability.

The Takeaway

The serverless approach provides benefits for both developers and product owners. The former can ease the infrastructure burden off their shoulders so they can zone in on the main product.

Product owners, at the same time, eliminate expenses for managing a server, improve flexibility, and discover the potential to scale.

However, just like any technology, serverless architecture has its place in suitable use cases. Therefore, before jumping on the serverless bandwagon, analyze whether serverless features will be worthwhile for your workload.

Subscribe to HackerNoon’s newsletters via our subscription form in the footer.