Serverless platforms like AWS Lambda are revolutionizing cloud application development. By abstracting servers and infrastructure, they allow you to deploy auto-scaling code instantly while paying only for what you use. This "no ops" approach unlocks transformative benefits around cost, productivity and innovation velocity.
In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll explore 7 key trends showcasing how and why serverless is rising to dominate the future of the cloud…
Serverless Adoption is Accelerating
Propelled by its game-changing advantages, serverless momentum is surging across cutting-edge startups and leading enterprises alike according to the latest data…
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Leading industry analyst firm Gartner predicts over 75% of global organizations will have serverless applications in production by 2025, up from less than 10% in 2020 representing a 6X increase in just 5 years.
The scale of this hockey stick growth underscores how blazingly fast serverless is moving from early niche into the mainstream. The accelerating ascent of serverless also mirrors the soaring rise of cloud over the past decade as the new default for modern application development.
Industry observers compare serverless to the transformational impacts of technologies like containers and virtualization but even faster and more disruptive thanks to its auto-scaling pay-as-you go nature which unlocks vastly greater flexibility and cost efficiency.
Let‘s explore the 7 key trends fueling serverless momentum starting with the #1 driver:
1. Slashing Costs by 70% or More
The single most compelling benefit of serverless for enterprises is cost savings with multiple studies quantifying decreases of ~70% or more compared to traditional server-ful application architectures…
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Leading consultancy Deloitte recently found serverless can reduce total computation costs by 70-90% across various workloads from web apps to analytics compared to running containers or virtual machines which require over-provisioning full-time resources.
By eliminating idle capacity and allowing you to scale instantly to zero, serverless represents a vastly more efficient usage model for cloud infrastructure. The auto-scaling event-driven nature of serverless ensures you only pay for exact compute time used instead of wasting spend on always-on resources.
This order-of-magnitude cost efficiency advantage makes serverless hugely appealing for organizations seeking to optimize cloud budgets. In addition, the inherent scalability of serverless translates into reduced engineering overheads around capacity planning and cluster management. Combined with its simplicity, serverless unlocks major savings.
2. Supercharging Developer Productivity
In addition to slash costs, serverless also turbocharges developer productivity by abstracting away tedious infrastructure management allowing teams to focus on delivering differentiating code instead of managing servers.
The data quantifying serverless acceleration of software delivery velocity is striking. According to recent research by Deloitte based on analysis across various applications…
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Migrating from traditional servers to a serverless approach can decrease time spent on undifferentiated infrastructure management by as much as 75% freeing developer cycles to build innovation.
By eliminating the need for low-level resource provisioning and configuration, serverless represents a vastly more productive paradigm for cloud development teams. The built-in auto-scaling constructs of platforms like AWS Lambda and Azure Functions translate into less complexity for developers and greater business velocity.
3. Infinitely Scalable by Default
Traditional application architectures require immense efforts around capacity planning and cluster scaling/management to handle spikes in traffic. Serverless platforms handle all this undifferentiated heavy lifting automatically in the background by default.
The auto-scaling nature of serverless runtimes like AWS Lambda radically simplifies building for scale while ensuring resources instantly right-size to any workload peaks or troughs without manual intervention.
Whereas old-school servers necessitate complex forecasting, resource management and orchestration to scale, the serverless operating model delivers near-infinite scale by default with no ops. This simplicity at scale accelerates delivery of highly scalable architectures.
By leveraging the elasticity of serverless, development teams can focus business logic while the underlying platform seamlessly handles provisioning capacity to whatever levels needed in real-time whether spiking from 100 requests per second to 10,000 RPS without blinking. Infinitely scalable by default.
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4. Microservices & Event-Driven Alignment
The distributed functions model and event-driven triggers of serverless computing make it a natural fit for modern microservices application patterns composed of decoupled single-responsibility components.
Forward-thinking organizations including Netflix, Expedia and Hulu have built next-generation microservices architectures on serverless with great outcomes. By combining auto-scaling functions with microservices principles, teams can deliver maximum application composability, scale and innovation velocity.
In addition, building on serverless unlocks real-time event-driven architectures wherein application logic can instantly react to business events from various event streaming sources.
As examples, AWS Lambda interoperates natively with event triggers from databases, storage buckets, streaming data services and more while Azure Functions provides seamless integration with Event Grid. This event-driven approach aligns perfectly with the needs of rapidly sensing and responding to shifts in customer behavior and market dynamics.
On both the microservices and event-driven fronts, serverless computing dovetails ideally with cutting-edge application patterns empowering next-generation delivery.
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5. Operational Simplicity
Free from provisioning and maintaining infrastructure, serverless products like AWS Lambda, Azure Functions and Google Cloud Run make deploying and operating backend application code radically simpler.
By fully managing the underlying runtimes, networking and scaling automatically, serverless products deliver immense operational simplicity for teams no longer bogged down patching runtimes, scaling clusters or updating servers. They are freed to deliver differentiating capabilities rapidly.
According to recent analysis from McKinsey encompassing various serverless platforms…
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Leveraging serverless can decrease time spent on cloud environment management by 70%+ owing to its no-ops nature according to measurable benchmarking. With so much built-in management across auto-scaling, logging, monitoring and security, serverless boosts productivity.
6. Multi-Cloud Portability
While public cloud vendors like AWS and Microsoft have led the way with Lambda and Azure Functions respectively, a key emerging trend is multi-cloud portability to prevent lock-in across serverless ecosystems.
Open source innovation is fueling greater consistency and interoperability across clouds when building serverless applications. As examples, the CDK for Terraform project powered by HashiCorp and Amazon along with independent function-as-a-service offerings such as StackPath Functions provide unified abstractions across clouds preventing vendor lock-in.
Forward-looking enterprises are smartly embracing multi-cloud serverless strategies to maintain maximum flexibility. After all, on-demand scale should transcend any single cloud. Designing serverless apps for portability from the start allows nimble responses to shifting business needs.
7. Security & Governance Guardrails
While the auto-scaling advantages of serverless are clear, standardized governance and controls are equally critical for enterprise adoption.
Leading serverless platforms provide robust capabilities here including fine-grained identity and access controls, encryption, data loss prevention, compliance auditing and more.
However when adopting serverless, organizations must also modernize IT governance practices for the new paradigm shifting from scrutinizing servers to securing functions as the core unit.
Forward-leaning companies are taking proactive steps to streamline and automate governance workflows around serverless functions using policy as code techniques to programmatically enforce security, operational and cost guardrails scaling seamlessly with increased function usage.
The Future Runs on Serverless
Across each of these 7 drivers from slashing TCO to accelerating innovation velocity, the immense benefits explain the breakout growth curve of serverless computing adoption. In a cloud-centric world, on-demand scale unlocks game-changing productivity and cost advantages.
As thought leader Corey Quinn of the Duckbill Group explains:
“Just as the cloud represented a paradigm shift in how companies historically thought about IT infrastructure, serverless involves a similarly disruptive transition. It challenges teams to think differently about architecture, resource management and delivery but the outcomes can be transformative in terms of leveraging cloud potential."
In coming years, serverless momentum will continue compounding ushering in the next era of cloud computing characterized by simplified, auto-scaling architectures delivering maximum business agility.
By embracing serverless, forward-thinking organizations position themselves to win. The no-ops serverless model removes complexity and costs while providing near-infinite scale instantly on any cloud. For both cutting-edge startups and established enterprises, serverless unlocks the future delivering unmatched velocity, cost efficiency and innovation potential.
The serverless revolution has arrived. Clouds managed by code instead of servers represent the new strategic high ground delivering unmatched developer productivity and value realization from cloud.
Platforms like AWS Lambda, Azure Functions and Cloud Run make serverless advantages easily accessible to all innovators big and small cementing the next generation architecture for building and scaling cloud-native applications.
Serverless Changes Everything – Are You Ready?
