Serverless computing offers a way for businesses to reduce their support costs by eliminating their physical IT infrastructure. In some ways this is similar to the idea behind Software As A Service, where you access the software’s functionality without worrying about the hardware behind it. Serverless computing effectively lets you deploy your own applications encapsulated as functions with no need to provision or manage any hardware.

Serverless Benefits

There are a number of benefits that come from this in addition to eliminating the need to manage infrastructure. Serverless computing is highly scalable, with the scaling managed automatically by the provider. Because there’s no need to worry about the capacity or configuration of specific physical infrastructure, it can be quicker to deploy serverless functions than other application models. Serverless deployments are often cost effective, as users are charged only for the execution time each function requires.

Serverless Models

Serverless applications follow several patterns.

The first is the serverless function pattern referenced above. If the capabilities are bigger than a single function, serverless containers allow a containerized application to be deployed to serverless container management cluster. A serverless workflow uses low-code integration of services.

Serverless On Azure

Azure provides several kinds of serverless computing, starting with the Azure Functions we’ve talked about before. As you’d expect from the name, this service provides support for the serverless function delivery model, allowing you to write code in your preferred language and easily execute it without building infrastructure.

For serverless container management, Azure offers serverless Kubernetes. This allows you to easily deploy containers without managing the container environment itself.

If you create web apps, the Azure App Service allows you to deploy into a scalable environment without managing the web application server infrastructure.

Drawbacks of Serverless

While there are clear advantages to serverless, there is also a potential drawback to keep in mind. Because there is no serverless standard across web platforms, building and deploying to a serverless environment creates a dependency on your current cloud provider. If vendor lock-in is a major concern for your business, you may not want to adopt the serverless model.

One potential mitigation of this drawback is that Azure Functions and the Azure App Service are both available on Azure Stack. Azure Stack allows you to bring Azure cloud into your own data center. This provides a clear path for transitioning out of Azure public cloud should your business choose to do so.

Whether or not you’re ready to embrace serverless computing, the Microsoft Azure Cloud offers numerous services that can simplify your IT infrastructure management. Contact Prescient Solutions to learn how to leverage the many capabilities of Microsoft Azure cloud.