Why Businesses Need to Know About and Consider Adopting Serverless Computing
Back is 2014, serverless computing became the newest buzzword in software architecture. This stemmed for Amazon’s unleashing of AWS Lambda, and since then we’ve seen incredible growth in serverless computing as more businesses have discovered how the applications of the technology can improve their operations.
Fast forward to today, and all the major cloud vendors have become seriously invested in serverless computing. By major cloud vendors, we’re not just talking about Amazon, but also Microsoft, IBM and Google. While there’s a lot of talk about serverless, there’s also plenty of questions circling the technology. For example, what exactly is serverless computing and what are the advantages it offers for business operations?
Why Businesses Need to Know About and Consider Adopting Serverless Computing
Let’s begin by answering these basic questions, and then discuss why an AWS Certification could be the next step in furthering your career.
What Is Serverless Computing?
Let’s start by talking about how misleading the term “serverless computing” is on the surface. When you hear about serverless technology, it immediately brings to mind a futuristic image where servers don’t exist. This isn’t the case with serverless computing.
With serverless technology, servers are still involved in the processes, it’s the way that we implement and manage the technology that’s different. With traditional servers, they must run constantly and require a team of administrators to manage them and make sure everything is running smoothly. Serverless technology is based entirely on event driven operations, which are essentially short lived functions that wake up the server temporarily, fulfill the command and then return the server to rest. In contrast to traditional servers, serverless computing is not “on” 24/7. Instead, it responds only as needed.
There is also one other major difference between serverless computing and traditional server systems, and that being that serverless removes the responsibility of running and managing the server from the user and transfers it to the cloud provider. This is a shift that positively affects everyone from business owners to developers.
Serverless technology opens up an entirely new playing field for developers. Where in the past, efforts were put into managing the infrastructure, developers can now leave those worries to the provider and concentrate fully on developing code and meeting the needs of their end users rather that devoting resources to server management. This translates to being able to bring ideas to life and present them to the market much faster than what was previously possible as developers can now focus on the core value of their applications rather than how to manage them.
Now that we’ve established a basic understanding of what serverless computing is, let’s talk about the advantages and why businesses should care.
Benefits of a Serverless Computing System
From a development and engineering standpoint, it’s easy to see the advantages of serverless computing. But, what about the benefits for businesses? Why should they be willing to invest in serverless technology when what they’re currently using seems to be working just fine? Owners, stakeholders and other interested parties should be made aware of the many ways that serverless computing can enhance their business. Here are a few starting points.
- Serverless Computing Makes for an Impressive Bottom Line. Let’s be honest, there isn’t a successful business anywhere that isn’t concerned about their bottom line. Serverless computing is good financial investment for many reasons. For starters, businesses aren’t paying for a constant service, but instead for units of consumption. But more than that is the money that is saved on the use of internal resources.
There’s no need to spend excessive amounts on hardware or the engineers that are capable of maintaining it. Those resources can be devoted to other areas of development instead.
Additionally, serverless computing can help create a centralized source for various types of data. This reduces the level of data redundancy and can save businesses thousands of dollars or more in maintenance and support costs.
- Expedited Time to Market. Those that switch to serverless technology are often amazed at how quickly app and software development can happen once developers are no longer focused on managing server infrastructure. Serverless computing let’s developers spend time doing what they do best, and that means a shorter time between the birth of a concept and market release.
- Meeting the Need for Speed. Because of the event driven platform of serverless computing, it’s nearly impossible for it to become bogged down with heavy traffic. Plus, with computing power being outsourced to the providers uber high performing data networks, speed becomes a non-issue and this provides the type of stability that’s difficult to achieve through traditional server technology.
- Scalability. Many businesses have stars in their eyes when they develop a new app. But, only time will tell how successful it will actually be. How can a business prepare for potential viral success without taking the risk of provisioning their infrastructure ahead of time or remaining completely unprepared for handling the traffic load should it become a hit? Serverless computing allows for easy scalability with low risk.
Companies Jumping on the Serverless Computing Bandwagon
Since Amazon introduced it’s AWS Lambda platform, serverless computing has surged in popularity and is becoming more mainstream than ever before. For proof we can look at the fact that major brands like Nike, Netflix, The Coca-Cola Company, Realtor.com and others have turned to AWS for solutions that have accelerated their businesses.
AWS is a high performance, scalable solution that’s easy to use, secure, flexible, cost-efficient, and most importantly reliable. This is why there’s been an increased interest in professionals that have achieved the AWS Certification. This can be seen in the current employment trends. Professionals who get AWS-certified tend to get jobs easier than those who don’t.
While serverless technology has gone mainstream, those working in the IT industry haven’t kept up. In fact, according to one poll, nearly half of IT professionals questioned admitted that they didn’t have a strong foundational understanding of serverless computing.
Do you see an opportunity here? Because, we do. If you’re ready to gain a competitive advantage and meet the shifting needs of the industry, now is the time to become knowledgeable and skilled in AWS and serverless computing.
Nirmal from Simplilearn, one of the largest certification providers worldwide. We provide online training in disciplines such as Cloud Computing, Digital Marketing, Cyber Security, Project Management, Quality Management and Data Science.