Serverless Computing is a form of cloud computing technique which can handle back-end functions of a website or an app. The intent is to lessen the load of IT infrastructure from a developer and deploy it as a managed service. This does not require the intervention of the administrator. Serverless computing performs best when the apps are broken into smaller parts and allow each piece of code to run independently from one another. These small components work in silos and do not disturb the functioning of other components. Once deployment is successfully completed, serverless apps can scale up and down as per requirement.
Features of Serverless Computing
The serverless computing architecture has proved its importance in many ways. It is different from cloud computing in the sense that the containers holds serverless apps. They can launch on their own when called. The term ‘serverless’ denotes that it does not use servers. It implies that we do not have to worry about them. Serverless is much more than just FaaS (Function-as-a-service). It is up to the user to scale up capacity during high demand and scale down to zero when not in use.
In this way, apps can be launched only when needed. When an event is triggered, the cloud provider dynamically allocates resources for that code to execute. The user can stop paying once the code has stopped execution.
Benefits of Serverless Computing
Due to its unique features and attributes, the serverless computing architecture is ideal for dealing with asynchronous, stateless apps that can be started instantaneously. This technique allows its users to purchase the services on a ‘pay-as-you-go’ basis. It saves us from the hassle of buying and maintaining a server, planning its capacity, etc. We can just focus on the deployment as we no longer need to focus on any manual intervention or external licenses.
Streamline workloads. This works with all types of data streamlining. For example, cleansing, validation, enrichment, transformation, including IoT sensor data, application of log data, financial market data and business data streams (from other data sources).
Data processing. Serverless architecture helps in PDF processing, audio normalization, image processing, noise reduction, thumbnail generation, optical character recognition (OCR) and video transcoding.
Cost saving. Serverless offers a lower cost of ownership than containers and virtual machines. Another main advantage being users do not have to pay for idle CPU time or unused space. The main cost saving comes from the developer’s perspective as there is no need for data provision, configuration or infrastructure management.
Flexibility. As discussed before, scalability is very much flexible. When there is more traffic, all the servers work on that spurge. When the requirement is over, servers closed just as quickly, thus there is nothing to worry on capacity planning.
Improved security. Applications are deployed using the in-built built-in security features in the platform. Every cloud provider has their own added security features for running applications. Thus, the infrastructures will be audited from time-to-time regularly audited against numerous international and industry-specific standards.
Running parallel tasks. Serverless computing techniques can seamlessly handle any regular tasks. Such tasks include data search, processing, web scrapping, hyperparameter tuning, genome processing to name a few.
Miscellaneous. Serverless has a wide range of applications such as finance, analytics, business intelligence, database applications, customer relationship management, engineering, streaming media, ERP.
Conclusion
Serverless computing has the capability to revolutionize the process of writing and deploying code. Instead of using APIs and long-running processes, nowadays we look out for customized functions that can tend to the specific requests. Not only that, but this new computing feature can also help us just focus on the deployment part as we no longer need to focus on any manual intervention or external licenses. Adopting any cloud technology is not only about agility and cost optimization. It also modernizes infrastructure and can help us unlock many new features of digital security. Due to higher demand for cloud offerings, concepts of serverless architecture and FaaS have grown hand-in-hand. with the ongoing drawbacks of this technology coming in focus, it will enhance this new architecture to evolve as a serverless suitable for general-purpose business workloads.
