Serverless computing is a cloud-computing execution model in which the cloud provider is responsible for managing the infrastructure and provisioning the necessary resources for running the code, while the customer pays only for the resources and time consumed by their specific application.
Serverless computing services allow developers to run their code without provisioning or managing servers, the service provider will handle the scaling, security, and availability of the servers for you. This allows developers to focus on writing and deploying their code, without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.
Serverless computing is one of the main categories of the Cloud Native Landscape.
The main benefits of serverless computing include:
- Cost efficiency: Since the customer only pays for the resources and time consumed by their specific application, serverless computing can be more cost-effective than traditional server-based computing.
- Scalability: Serverless computing services can automatically scale the resources needed to run the code, which makes it easy to handle sudden spikes in traffic.
- Flexibility: Serverless computing services allow developers to build and deploy applications using a variety of languages and frameworks.
- Event-driven: Serverless computing services are often triggered by specific events, such as a new file being added to a storage bucket or a new message arriving in a queue, this allows developers to build event-driven architectures that can respond to specific triggers.
Some examples of serverless computing services include:
- AWS Lambda: A serverless computing platform from Amazon Web Services (AWS) that allows developers to run code without provisioning or managing servers.
- Google Cloud Functions: A serverless computing platform from Google Cloud that allows developers to run code in response to events without worrying about infrastructure.
- Microsoft Azure Functions: A serverless computing platform from Microsoft Azure that allows developers to run code in response to events, such as changes to data in a database or a new file in a storage account.
- IBM Cloud Functions: A serverless computing platform from IBM Cloud that allows developers to run code in response to events, such as changes to data in a database or a new file in a storage account.
- Oracle Functions: A serverless computing platform from Oracle Cloud that allows developers to run code in response to events without worrying about infrastructure.
- Alibaba Cloud Function Compute: A serverless computing platform from Alibaba Cloud that allows developers to run code in response to events without worrying about infrastructure.
These serverless computing services enable developers to focus on writing code to meet business requirements rather than worrying about infrastructure maintenance, scaling, and availability.