One of the promised (and real) benefits of cloud is the reduced demand on IT teams to perform routine maintenance and support processes. This is because the cloud provider assumes responsibility for support of the physical infrastructure and handles many of those procedures.

Serverless Computing Benefits

Serverless computing goes even further and completely eliminates the need for teams to support physical infrastructure. In this model, the cloud provider runs services that automatically allocate computing resources when needed. Rather than running on fixed instances, workloads generate events that invoke and are executed by these services as needed. This can be very cost effective; in addition to eliminating the time and cost of maintenance, serverless applications are charged only for the resources they need. In addition, serverless computing is completely and automatically scalable.

Serverless computing can also simplify and speed up application development. This is because the serverless application consists of a set of function calls. Each function operates independently. As a result, time to market can be faster for a serverless application than when developing a traditional application where developers need to manage infrastructure in addition to implementing the desired functionality.

Serverless Computing Challenges

Microsoft Azure offers a several different styles of serverless computing, allowing it to meet the needs of different types of applications. However, not every application is a good fit for serverless computing. In particular, because serverless computing relies on a set of independent functions, it does not work well for applications that need to maintain state. It also isn’t appropriate for applications that don’t complete quickly. Applications with a high percentage utilization may end up costing more in a serverless model than if they ran on a dedicated virtual machine.

Serverless computing can also be challenging because developing serverless functions is different from developing traditional applications. There aren’t standards for serverless, and capabilities and best practices vary by cloud provider. That means your team needs experience working in your cloud in order to effectively build serverless applications. If you have a multicloud environment, porting serverless applications between clouds is not always simple.

Use Cases for Serverless Computing

So getting the most benefit from serverless computing depends on applying it to the right use cases. Typical scenarios include event-driven Internet of Things and mobile applications, along with other applications that need to respond to events in real time. Other appropriate use cases include processing file uploads and validating database entries.

It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the capabilities of cloud and choose a solution model that’s inappropriate for your scenario. Cloud services from Prescient Solutions ensure you migrate to the cloud architecture that works best for your requirements. Contact us to learn more about choosing and implementing effective cloud solutions.