Serverless for Business: What It Is & Why

Businesses have entered into a challenging economic period. Now is a good time to consider transforming your business during this dynamic time in the market and choose the technological advancement to help you advance into a mainstream player.  

With that in mind, businesses are embracing the serverless approach. According to Statista , 51% of organizations worldwide plan to adopt serverless status in the next 18 months or will have already done so by 2022.  

But what is serverless, and does this approach suit your business?  

Serverless, also referred to as function as a service (FaaS), is a relatively recent innovation but has already become an excellent option for many organizations. It provides the functions of the server via the cloud to enable a more straightforward and cost-effective way to build and operate your application. One of its most significant advantages is making it easier to accomplish challenges associated with managing servers, such as provisioning, scaling, and maintaining the infrastructure. Scaling can be automatic, and you only pay for what you use.  

Serverless framework-use cases span a variety of industries, from healthcare to fintech providers. This approach is also a valuable for such emerging fields, as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine-learning technologies. 

What businesses most benefit in applying serverless technology?

Serverless environments are suitable for companies that use applications with nonuniform access characteristics and highly variable traffic patterns, e.g. 

Seasonal ventures  

For businesses that deal with seasonal and short-term spikes, such as holidays or financial reporting, serverless can cut costs as a company pays for that short usage period. A good example of a company that would benefit from serverless technology is a shop that sells Christmas or holiday cards created before the holidays that will need to pay only for the web shop running during the pre-Christmas season.   

Start-ups 

Serverless applications are also perfect for experimentation or exploring a start-up idea, as the deployment costs directly correlate with usage numbers, so the investment risk is minimized.  

Software development projects  

The serverless approach makes it possible for engineers, among others, to focus on core duties rather than figuring out the underlying infrastructure needed to operate and support their apps.  

When serverless is not a fit  

The serverless approach is not meant for business processes built on blockchain or monolith architectures. These types of architectures don't allow the system to split into separate microservices and have highly voluminous applications, which do not fit the serverless approach, where functions should launch fast and run for a short amount of time. In addition, some programming frameworks, such as Java Spring, also can't be used with the serverless approach. 

Additional points that can stop you from applying serverless in your business are the fear of the unknown and the need for the right staff to help you step on the serverless track for the first time. The last concern deserves to be highlighted: even though serverless should be "easier," it still takes team expertise to be competent in a new tool. 

Are you looking to capitalize on the benefits of serverless? PieSoft is a software and web development company with 17 years of overall technology expertise. Through our AWS migration services, we help you moving to the cloud, switching providers, or using a serverless infrastructure accessible to help you build unique, cost-efficient, and rock-solid solutions for your business.