Serverless Computing, a novel technology in the computing industry, has gained significant momentum in both the industry and academia. It has revolutionized IT infrastructure by enabling the delivery of efficient IT operations as billable services. This paradigm shift began in the late 2010s, distinctly setting Serverless Computing apart from established IT services like Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) clouds.
However, the particular defining characteristics of Serverless Computing and how they deviate from traditional cloud computing are still subject to debate, leading to disagreements and confusion among experts.
The Quest for a Definition
The elusive, varying definitions of Serverless Computing have often resulted in points of divergence rather than consensus. For instance, there is no agreement on whether serverless is primarily a set of user requirements or if it should also dictate specific implementation choices on the provider’s side such as the need for an autoscaling mechanism to achieve elasticity.
Still, this does not undermine the importance and value of Serverless Computing. In fact, it makes it a more fascinating subject for academic study and industrial interest. As such, the focus of this blog will be to propose a clarified definition that encapsulates the crucial conceptual features of Serverless Computing, while comparing it to other related terminologies.
Additionally, we will take a tour down memory lane, looking at the historical development that led to Serverless Computing, starting from mainframe virtualization in the 1960s to grid and cloud computing as we know it today. Afterwards, we will explore the existing cloud computing service models that interact with Serverless Computing, including IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, CaaS, FaaS, BaaS, and see how each of them fits into the Serverless Computing paradigm.
Understanding Serverless Computing
The refined definition of serverless is as follows: Serverless Computing is a cloud computing paradigm that involves a class of cloud computing platforms. On these platforms, applications can be developed, deployed, and run without allocating and managing virtualized servers or resources or worrying about operational aspects such as execution environment (physical machines, VMs, and container).
For instance, through a Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) model, Serverless Computing enables autoscaling and embraces a utilization-based billing policy, charging users based on actual resource usage rather than idle resources.
The Future of Serverless Computing
As Serverless Computing continues to grow, we expect to see resources shift to high-level interfaces that hide the cloud execution environment optimally, catering to automatic fine-grained resource allocation, multiprocessing, and sharing. The billing models will evolve towards real pay-per-use, and users will have less control over the execution environment with the burden of operational aspects like fault tolerance or elastic scaling being offloaded to the cloud provider.
Additionally, we anticipate more development in areas such as Serverless databases, Serverless SQL-as-a-Service, Serverless BigData processing, Serverless edge computing, and Serverless streaming services.
Serverless Computing has successfully redefined the future of IT infrastructure and will continue to shape the cloud landscape, pushing boundaries and breaking new ground in the computing arena.
Tags: #ServerlessComputing #CloudTech #ITInfrastructure #FaaS
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