Serverless for Startups: A quick way to build products
From FinTechs to eCommerce giants, serverless has use cases in every business verticals. Breaking down large applications into self-contained functional units makes serverless an exemplary architecture for a startup that needs quicker iterations.
When it comes to adopting serverless technologies, many startups get inspired by the use cases of successful tech giants, while others choose to customize architecture.
However, according to a recent discussion on Reddit, one user points out, “many startups fear from imitating/adopting tech giant’s tech stack and architectures. This is usually under the assumption that they are going to have tech giant challenges which may potentially close down their business.“
Yet, this is neither entirely true nor false. When you are choosing serverless for a startup, understanding the compatibility of the tech stack with your business requirements is vital.
We’ll discuss the core principles of serverless, its advantages, and different serverless vendors with this blog. Let’s first start with the evolution of serverless and how it changed the development landscape.
Evolution of Serverless Technology
“Serverless” was first mentioned in a piece written by Ken Fromm in 2012. The road to the evolution of serverless started back in the 1990s and not in 2012. Software development back in the ’90s saw organizations separating frontend and backend. It was great for development purposes, but firms were paying for an idle resource that could not scale down according to the traffic.
Problems of scaling on-demand computing resources were first addressed through the introduction of VMs in the 2000s. Although, the actual evolution of computing resources began after introducing EC2, S3, and SQS.
However, the real breakthrough was the launch of AWS Lambda in 2014. AWS Lambda is an on-demand cloud computing resource that offers FaaS capabilities. Earlier, operation teams allocated the resources based on demand forecasting, which had overhead issues, and the computations were not to exceed the system’s capabilities. AWS Lambda helps you handle the system’s restrictive capabilities by offering computing resources that scale up or down in real-time.
Eventually, the subsequent launch of Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure created more options for startups in the market. Since then, the evolution of serverless has seen a significant boost.
According to Martin Fowler, there are two overlapping areas which serverless encompasses,
- Serverless was first used as a concept that describes the application with integrated third-party services and cloud-hosted apps which manage server-side logic. Such services are often described as the “(Mobile) Backend as a Service” or BaaS.
- Serverless can also be described as an architecture where server-side logic is written from scratch and is run in stateless compute containers that are event-triggered and fully managed by third-party services. It is often referred to as “Functions as a Service” or “FaaS,” and one of the most significant examples of its implementation is AWS Lambda.
BaaS and FaaS offer a similar attribute of no need for resource management, but they are different in their approach. Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) is a serverless architecture where the service provider manages all behind-the-scenes aspects of web or mobile apps. BaaS vendors offer pre-written software that automatically manages user authentication, database management, remote upgrading, and even cloud hosting.
FaaS also allows you to write codes but rather than completely outsourcing the backend, it offers a modular approach. So, you can write and update a piece of code on the fly in response to an event like a user clicking on the download button in a web application. FaaS makes it easy for you to implement code and scale it through the execution of microservices.
Benefits of Serverless Architecture
- Agility of Deployments
- Modular Approach
- High Adaptability
- Pay Per Use Model
Serverless Platforms For Startups
#1. AWS Lambda
#2. Google Cloud Functions
#3. Azure Functions
#4. Alibaba Functions
#5. Apache OpenWhisk
Conclusion
Adopting serverless technologies is not an easy decision. As a CTO or CEO, you should understand the business requirements, existing infrastructure, and future needs for expanding the startup. All these factors contribute to the decision of whether to choose serverless or not.
However, you can opt for serverless if,
- You want to create an app that can process multi-media with ease.
- You need to have comprehensive data logging capabilities in your application.
- You are creating an IoT(Internet of Things) application to respond to sensor input messages.
- You want a streaming service app with parallelly working functions.
- You need a chatbot that can scale on-demand as per peak traffic.
These are just the tip of the iceberg. Serverless is not restricted, and its possibilities are endless. If you have specific requirements for your application, then at Simform, we have reliable serverless solutions that might help.
Check out the original published article here: Serverless for Startups: An Evolutionary Way to Build Successful Products