The Server Story:
I grew up in the age of terms such as “Mainframe – Minicomputers – Ethernet Cable – Main Computer – Terminal Location – Floppy Disks”. These terms may sound ancient to many and for the millennials, most of these terms can be related to things displayed at museums.
In the ’90s, my office had a separate room with big routers and switches, servers, server clusters, storage gear, etc. The admins handling the servers slept most of the days in the same room. If there was an issue on the server-side (or) a downtime it was an “all hell breaks loose” scenario. Not just once, it is the same scenario and situation every time if there is a downtime/server issue.
I have witnessed people running from pillar to post to get the issue fixed as soon as possible and get the server up and running since every second of downtime was costing us and clients thousands of dollars. Thanks to the Technology advancements and innovations! These scenarios are no longer part of most of the enterprises out there and the chaos is cut down to zero. Digital Transformation was to happen, and we all witnessed it so in the early 2000s if my memory serves me right.
The Cloud Computing:
The first use of “Cloud Computing” was termed in the year 2006 in an Industry conference by the CEO of Google. Since the introduction of cloud computing, the impact was immense across industries – mainly enterprises. Cloud computing has taken the IT world by storm – it completely changed the way organizations approached IT.
Serverless Computing:
2014 – the year that saw another revolution in the IT industry – AWS Lambda was introduced, the first serverless computing platform launched, followed by Microsoft Azure in 2016 and Google Cloud Services in 2017.
I still remember that day when AWS was launched. Was reading almost every article to understand the technology revolution and was in bliss to understand and witness the transformation that has taken place in the past 2 decades.
A quick look at statements made by the top 3 cloud service providers about “Serverless Computing”.
Serverless Architecture Market:
According to Markets and Markets, the global serverless architecture market size is projected to grow from USD 7.6 billion in 2020 to USD 21.1 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 22.7% during the forecast period.
The major factors driving the growth of the serverless architecture market include the rising need of shifting from CAPEX to OPEX by removing the need to manage servers, thereby reducing the infrastructure cost.
Large enterprises are expected to invest significantly to implement suitable serverless architecture service types which would enable enterprises to save on infrastructure costs, improve business functioning, and sustain in intense competition.
How can Enterprises Benefit from Serverless Computing?
Enhance efficiency, improve productivity and Reduce Cost – Enterprises always valued these 3 factors. As the technology and innovations are at greater heights, serverless computing provides an opportunity for enterprises across the globe to achieve cost savings without compromising on efficiency and productivity.
Enterprises started to believe that the traditional enterprise software is expensive and does not add value as it was expected to be. In the age of the digital revolution, Enterprises believe in moving towards open-source (or) cloud service providers rather than spending on paid software and licenses.
Extracting value directly from IT is the new normal for any enterprise and leadership across the globe feels going Serverless is a great way to reduce costs as enterprises outsource the responsibilities for managing servers and databases. Serverless means fewer human resources involvement and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for servers are the thing of the past. Enterprises with serverless computing now could quickly prototype and trial new products, then pivot easily based on market response.
Benefit 1 – Quicker Development & Deployment Cycles
Serverless approaches give immense freedom to developers to create a new application in hours and days instead of the traditional ways of doing it for weeks and months. One of the focus and benefits of serverless architecture is enhancing developer productivity. With a serverless approach in place, developers can develop, test, and deploy the application completely agile. As many tests can be run since there is no dependency on the infrastructure and other modules and components.
Serverless architecture providers are investing to standardize development environments to encourage the use of serverless architectures. Serverless computing can help to track and plan the developer’s progress of an individualized service according to its current status. Not only that, with the help of these services, it is always easy and convenient to test the code and easy to track the progress. These benefits accelerate development and checking to be more accessible and precise.
Serverless computing can help products to be market-specific, less expensive, and advanced. Businesses can be competition ready with the optimal product at a reasonable price.
Benefit 2 – Scalability & Flexibility
Scalability and Flexibility are two sides of the same coin when it comes to cloud environments. Enterprises see and consider this to be beneficial. With serverless computing in place, the DevOps team no longer plays the role of updating or adding compute resources. Serverless applications by themselves can automatically scale up to handle spikes in traffic. In case of lesser traffic or fewer users, the application automatically scales down.
Another benefit of the Cloud environment is that it allows enterprises to scale up and down on a need basis. If there is a need for additional resources the following month, then you can easily and quickly increase the number of assets available to your company. Along with the pay-as-you-use model, the cloud environment provides the resources you need at any given time while maintaining cost efficiency.
Benefit 3 – Cost-Effective
The key and celebrated feature of cloud computing is the pricing model. “Pay-as-you-use” as they say captured the imagination of enterprises instantly. This model lets enterprises pay only for the cloud resources they utilize. Earlier the payment terms were expensive since it was either a flat rate or fixed pricing.
Enterprises view this payment method as cost-efficient since there is no need to pay extra for the resources that have not been used. This payment method offers flexibility, hence fits perfectly for businesses of any scale. Irrespective of the size of the organization and the need for cloud resources, the “Pay-as-you-use” model is all for cost efficiency. With serverless architecture in place, the responsibility of managing servers, databases, and maintenance costs are history.
Serverless computing technology makes enterprises become highly efficient and derive maximum potential from resources without spending more money. As they always say, one solution may not be the answer or solution to every IT problem – however, serverless architecture is the torchbearer for many computing solutions in the coming years.
