The five key characteristics that need to be satisfied while making a serverless technology are:

• There is no need to manage the server
• There is no need to worry about scaling when the request arises, it is a highly available and high tolerance for faults
• There is no idle capacity
• Micro billing i.e., if the code is not executed there is no payment. Usually, the bills are calculated according to memory consumption, and time is taken while execution.

Basic functions that are satisfied by the core technologies are:

• A basic platform that executes a code
• A stable environment that complies with different pieces of code
• A scalable system that is used for routine engines.

There are some core vendors that provide different services that involve serverless technology i.e., Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.  Each vendor is using serverless technology in one way or another using the basic characteristics to provide different technologies.

Microsoft

Microsoft Azure function and Microsoft Azure Logic can be used in a business together and separately. In Microsoft Azure Logic there is a logical container that contains a workflow in form of triggers and actions. The workflow starts from a trigger and then follows a set of actions. For example, a trigger can trigger the request per hour and the activities involve getting data from the server. It runs on an infrastructure of the Azure region that is abstracted and not visible to anyone taking the service. It is scalable as the number of requests increases the instances also increase.

It consists of different components:

• Logic Apps RP: reads the workflow and divides it into activities and tasks
• Logic Apps runtime: distributed computations are synchronized to complete a task
• Connection Manager: manages the connection and token refreshment
• Connector Runtime: provides API abstraction

Azure functions are used in web, mobile applications by the programmer and are part of the Azure Web and Mobile suite. It consists of small meaningful code that can be designed, reused, and are shared across the server. It can be built using different programming languages; Java, C#, F#, Node js, Python, and Php. It can be used from scripting languages like Bash, PowerShell, and Command Line Interface (CLI). These functions serve a single purpose and are designed to serve the services in a connected way. These are different on the basis of developer experience and deployment.

Azure Event Grid allows building applications that use event-based architecture in which the Azure resource is selected and then an endpoint is provided that is needed to send the event to. Event Grid has support for custom events and also Azure Events like resource group and storage blob. Events can be filtered according to need i.e.; a single event can be sent to different endpoints; events can be multi-casted which means multiple events can be sent to multiple endpoints and the sender can ensure reliable delivery.

Amazon

Amazon Lambda provides a service to run the code on the server without managing servers, creating clusters of workloads, and having zero knowledge about backend and administration. With Lambda, it is very easy to implement code, one just has to upload the ZIP file on the server and forget about everything else.

Amazon Step Functions provides an interface to run and create a series check listed events and workflows to maintain the state of the application. It orchestrates the events and applications, manages retries and failures and it can be challenging. With the advancement of the applications, its code also becomes complex and it requires a lot of effort to manage it, but Amazon Lambda provides an operational control module in which retry logic, sequencing, error handling, and the state which remove the extra burden from the team.

Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) is used a message service in which messages can be sent to Application to Application (A2A) and Application to Person (A2P). it provides high throughput for messages that are pushed based, many to many in distributed and server-driven systems. It provides to send messages to a very large number of subscriber systems that includes AWS Lambda functions, Amazon SQS queues, and HTTP endpoint for parallel processing.

Google

Google Cloud Functions let to run the code on the server on a pay-as-you-go basis, Function as a Service (FaaS). It just requires the developer to write a code and Google cloud manages the operational infrastructure. It helps in developing the code fast as the developer develops small code snippets for responding to events. It prevents the lock-in capability across the distributed environment.

Cloud Pub/Sub is similar to Amazon Simple Notification, it provides massages for event-driven systems and analytics. Google cloud gives $300 for 90 new customers and all users get 10 GB per month free of charge for delivery of messages. Its aim is to provide low-cost event ingestions and puts the vendor in control of the management.

In the past few months (8-10 months) the vendors are focusing on implementing serverless technology in different applications however it still lags some maturity when it comes to building management and developer tools. All these vendors are focusing to come up with a solution to address intelligent server management and monitoring. It is very difficult to choose among these vendors because their functionalities are a lot look alike. Once a solution is selected and implemented, it is very hard to convert it to the solution from another vendor.

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There were different evolutions in cloud computing. In the start, there were dedicated machines which then converted into a shared pool of virtual machines which consisted of separate operating systems. Then cloud computing introduced the concept of containerization, in which each container had resources to carry a job and provide a high level of abstraction and efficiency. With rising demand, CSPs are focusing on serverless technology.

Serverless technology is a revolution in today’s era of cloud storage and computing. In serverless architecture, the service provider dynamically manages the computing power of the server according to the requirement. There is a pool of resources like operating system, runtime environment,s, and hardware. It works as a function as a service model (FaaS). In this model, the application is converted into functions and the environment provides the execution of the functions in a seamless manner. The application consumes the resources and after that releases the resources, and the pricing model is applied just when the resource is used and the execution time is not included. In the serverless model, most of the responsibility is shifted towards the service providers and the developer, who develops the application to use the service and is at ease and not concerned with the management. The CSP is responsible for data center and server management and the overall environment.

There are many benefits of implementing serverless computing and getting services from serverless technology:

1. Cost: Serverless technology is the best way to reduce cost because the database, managing server, and some logics are outsourced. It takes less computing resources and human resources to implement and utilize serverless technology. It is not efficient for every organization to build a dedicated server when there is serverless computing available and it does not increase any overhead but only reduces efforts and one can focus on other important things.
2. Ease in deployment: Serverless technology is easy to deploy and can be deployed in hours or maximum some days. This is because it is scalable and there’s no worry about infrastructure and one can just implement the code and release it without worrying about anything else.
3. Efficiency: Serverless means “pay per request” it means that the company is charged according to the use of the resource and there is less waste generated like if there’s a dedicated server it needs to be turned on all the time.
4. Time-Saving: As the programmer does not have to worry about the architecture, therefore, they can put their focus on the other important aspects so it saves them time. Due to this they can have some spare time and can develop a strong user interface because customers do not have an interest in the architecture but their focus is on the user interface, therefore, to engage the customers there should be a stronger interface. As it requires a lot of time hence this can be done by using serverless technology.
5. Scalability and flexibility: Serverless technology is very scalable and flexible. It can manage the load even if the load is increasing and there is no harm if there is less flow because the price is set according to the use and the price is not paid before the use. In this case, the business doesn’t have to worry about the load and growth of traffic because it manages the traffic according to the load and they have to pay according to the usage.
6. Latency: In server-less technology, there are multiple servers and global access points that result in the increase of accessibility from all around the world and low response time.

There are many use cases that can be the best fit for serverless computing. Event-triggered computing, usually used in multimedia processing i.e. volume of data is uploaded, transcoded, fetched, and watermarked. It is also the best fit for big data processing. Usually, the data of IoT devices (sensors) is in bulk amount and requires intensive computation to process the bulk data. It can be used in live video broadcasting and many more systems. Its application is increasing day by day due to the exponential growth of traffic and customer demand. There are different cloud providers that are providing serverless technology, like AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, Microsoft Azure Functions, and IBM Open Whisk. AWS provides an environment in which the developer needs to upload the code and it manages and everything like workload servers and scaling logic etc. The code can be triggered from any service of 140 AWS services and can be accessed from handheld or laptop.

It is very likely that more businesses are using serverless technology and the businesses that are not using it, will get benefit from it in the near future. Developers will use it to develop web applications, games, mobile applications, and IoT backend algorithms to process and perform complex operations on data. There will be a marketplace and widespread adoption of it especially for those organizations that are currently using cloud technology to gain a competitive advantage amongst their competitors. Organizations will adopt serverless technology whenever and wherever possible.

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