Is serverless computing the right choice for your business?

FACED with increasing competitive pressures in the crowded global marketplace, businesses are continually seeking innovative ways and smart solutions to enhance their operational and cost efficiency and to gain an advantage.

In line with that goal, many forward-thinking businesses have ditched their antiquated IT infrastructure and migrated their data, operations, and even critical functions to the cloud, allowing them to be more nimble and agile as the digital economy requires them to be.

But thanks to the rapid development in the IT infrastructure space, developers can now leverage serverless computing, which offers more advantages over traditional cloud-based or server-centric infrastructure.

Many developers find that serverless architecture gives them greater scalability, flexibility, and slashes the time to release at a much lower cost as they do not need to worry about acquiring, provisioning, and maintaining back-end servers.

To be able to deploy serverless architecture efficiently, enterprises must first know what exactly it is, and how it functions, however.

Serverless architecture, defined

Serverless computing, in a nutshell, is a model for the cloud where which the service provider allocates computing resources and storage and charges on an as-used basis.

While there are still servers involved, it is entirely the responsibility of the service provider to provision, manage, and maintain them.

Developers or users could write and deploy code without worrying about the underlying infrastructure, allowing them to focus entirely on business logic, while providers take care of the rest of the tasks such as the virtual machine and containerization management.

There are two main types of serverless infrastructure offerings at the moment. The first of these is Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) where most backend processes of an application are monitored and maintained on the cloud by a third party provider.

The other type is the Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) which features an application that runs parts of code via triggers. This particular service allows for apps to initiate functions on demand, which provide enhanced flexibility for server-side applications.

And since serverless functions are event-driven, a particular code is invoked only when a request triggers it, and users only need to pay for the execution instead of fixed monthly charges.

Key benefits of serverless architecture

There is a pressing need for developers in the modern era to focus entirely on the business goals of the codes they write, instead of worrying about the technical details and challenges of the IT infrastructure. And serverless architecture allows them to do exactly that.

Here are some of the key benefits of serverless architecture.

• Cost efficient – Traditional cloud services and server allocation often come with a flat fee, and companies rarely utilize all the resources that they pay for. With serverless computing, they only pay for what they actually use.
• Enhanced scalability – Serverless computing providers handle scaling on demand allowing developers to stage the changes that accommodate the company’s growth. Apps developed with the technology will scale automatically as the user base grow or if the usage increases.
• Streamlined backend processes – By using FaaS, developers could deploy single function codes similar to APIs, simplifying the backend coding processes.
• Rapid turnaround – Developers could dramatically cut the time to bring their product to market using serverless infrastructure, without the need for complex processes to debug. They could fix, modify, and add new features to an app on a piecemeal basis.

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