Is Serverless Ready for the Enterprise ?
Chett Rubenstein & Ray Young
The adoption of serverless computing is gaining momentum as more organizations are realizing the economic value of this technology .
Serverless computing , more accurately termed Functions as a Service ( FaaS ), is a very compelling format . Developers no longer need to be concerned with compute instances and can instead stay focused on the code logic .
Most enterprise customers are only dipping their toes into the technology , just as they are with microservices and containers . The question we are often asked at CTP is whether they can go beyond a toe-dipping exercise and apply it to a “ real ” application .
It is worth noting that Microsoft moved Azure Functions to general availability in December 2016 , and Google Cloud Functions moved from private alpha to public beta , as announced at Google Cloud Next this year . However , AWS Lambda has been in general availability since May 2015 , so this article may be more relevant to AWS users .
Certainly in the startup world , there is clear evidence of its use . The idea of running solutions on a shoestring budget is attractive for companies that are just at the stage of proving out their concepts , and the serverless model can be a fifth of the cost compared to more traditional cloud architecture . In addition , increased speed is always critical to startups and the simplified serverless model allows team to develop solutions quickly without the overhead of infrastructure architecture and coding .
Five Issues To Consider
For the enterprise , the serverless model is just starting to get some attention . Below are some of the issues that are currently under scrutiny around the serverless computing model . These are not showstoppers , but rather things to consider as you architect serverless solutions .
38 | THE DOPPLER | SPRING 2017