Serverless
Build cloud-native applications without worrying about server provisioning, scaling, and patching. Pay for compute time only.
What is Serverless?
Serverless is a cloud computing paradigm where computing resources are provisioned on demand.
Common infrastructure management tasks such as provisioning, scaling and patching are offloaded to the cloud providers, allowing development teams to focus their efforts on the business logic of their application or process.
Serverless computing enabled a ‘pay per use’ model – you only pay for resources being used, never for idle time.
There are servers in serverless computing. The term ‘serverless’ remains as it describes the customer’s experience of servers. The servers are essentially invisible so cannot be managed or interacted with in any way.
Serverless at a glance
What are the advantages of serverless?
- Developers can focus on code (in any supported language), not infrastructure
- Almost zero infrastructure maintenance
- Pay for runtime ‘compute’ costs only
- Vertical scaling upwards or downwards based on demand and parameters
How does serverless relate to other cloud-native solutions?
Microservices are the most common use case of serverless, for creating small services performing a single job and communicating with one another via APIs.
While microservices can also be built and operated using either PaaS or containers, serverless has gained significant momentum given its attributes around small bits of codes that do one thing, inherent and automatic scaling, rapid provisioning, and a pricing model that never charges for idle capacity.
How does serverless compare to traditional practices?
Compared with traditional virtual machines (VMs) and containers, serverless differs across the following attributes:
- Provisioning time in milliseconds
- Zero ongoing administration
- Instant and coherent elastic scaling
- Zero capacity planning required
- High availability
- 100% efficient resource utilisation – pay for consumption, per block of 100 milliseconds
Expert advice on cloud-native solutions in your Enterprise
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Certified cloud consultants and development specialists can extend your teams to plan, design, deploy and manage outcome-driven serverless solutions.
Our professionals can help your organisation maximise your cloud-native approach and set up programmes for long-term success.
