One of the buzzwords that you’ll hear these days is “Serverless Computing”. There is an entire community of evangelists out there predicting the apocalypse date for server-based applications. They make some valid points:
- Servers are complicated.
- Servers are expensive.
- Servers are unreliable.
Perhaps the most compelling reason is that servers aren’t “in” anymore. Let’s dive into what serverless really means and all the hype around it.
Tell Me More About Serverless Computing – What is it?
When you hear the word “serverless”, you may immediately think no more servers. Yes, that is partly true. However, going serverless doesn’t mean doing away with the servers entirely. Your code and resources will still live and breathe on someone else’s server. The only difference is that you leave all the server configurations and management to your cloud service providers (CSP). CSPs, like AWS, offer serverless computing and hosting services, such as a database or a frontend application, in exchange for a pay-as-you-go plan. This trade-off is exciting, especially for new businesses turning to cloud computing to reduce upfront capital costs.
Why Should I Care About Serverless?
One of the most attractive benefits of serverless is its cheaper price point. Costs become a function of the usage of your app. To sweeten the deal, cloud service providers offer free pricing tiers for you to try. As a result, you get to use certain services for free while developing your product. On the other hand, servers are capital-intensive, with costs for a DevOps team and purchasing on-premise physical servers.
Similarly, scalability is a great benefit of going serverless. You don’t need to make changes to the infrastructure, whether your app has 5 or 5 million users. Managing a fleet of servers that can scale according to demand is simple when you go with serverless (because the CSP does it all for you)!
Another plus of serverless is that debugging issues and introducing new features to your applications is easier. Because updating servers is unnecessary, you’ll find it easy to isolate issues or work on features in an isolated workspace before testing your code. This approach not only makes life easy for developers but also allows ample transparency for your QA team and business stakeholders to test new releases with relative ease. Contact a cloud solutions service provider for more details about serverless computing.
What Use Cases Aren’t Ideal for Serverless Applications?
While serverless seems like a great choice for MVPs and businesses with general computing needs, it is not ideal for every business. Apps that rely on complex and memory-intensive business algorithms, such as ML and AI applications, are better suited for using dedicated servers to run those processes. You wouldn’t want to spend weeks training your models or racking up a massive bill using serverless.
Similarly, certain businesses may enforce their own legal or tech constraints to run certain parts of their backend architecture within their virtual private cloud (think HIPAA and PII). Such businesses are less likely to take a serverless approach.
The final and most compelling reason for using servers is cost savings. As good as the pay-as-you-go model is, every single serverless architecture has a threshold of when it’s no longer cost-effective. At that point, businesses should go with a fleet of servers at a discounted rate from the cloud service providers in exchange for a prolonged period of commitment (usually 1 to 3 years).
The Bottom Line
Serverless models provide a powerful alternative to traditional servers for developing your next big idea. In fact, it has compelling advantages in terms of cost and scalability.
Considering a serverless infrastructure? Contact us for a free consultation on leveraging serverless computing for your next web or mobile application!
