Why Is Serverless Architecture Gaining Massive Popularity?

by sagacity

In a fast-paced world, developers need time to develop new applications or product features, to meet customer expectations. They cannot work with legacy infrastructure and technologies if they want to develop new-age applications quickly.

That’s where serverless architecture is useful.

Serverless architecture implies that developers can write codes without having to manage the servers. There are servers involved, but the service providers take care of that. The service provider manages the hardware allocation, databases, and storage systems. It is a win-win for both developers and the company. Developers can save time and focus on product innovations, while companies can reduce the overall costs by up to 60%.

No wonder, companies worldwide are adopting serverless architecture. According to Global Market insights, the serverless architecture market is growing at a CAGR of 20%.

Cloud services such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-service; Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS), and Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) are the three stages of serverless architecture.

What Makes Serverless Architecture Popular?
Cost-effective

Companies are trying to minimize capital expenditure. One way to do it is by investing in a serverless architecture. The serverless architecture eliminates the cost involved in installing and maintaining physical servers by almost 70%. They don’t have to pay weekly or monthly fees too. It fully operates on the pay-as-you-go model and does not require any upfront fees for idle servers. Companies need to pay only when the code is running. There are no additional charges for creating or deleting I/O requests too. They can freeze the function when not in use. Another benefit of serverless architecture is that companies can save the labor costs as they don’t hire resources to maintain or monitor the servers 24/7.

Improves productivity

Typically developers spend over 17 hours a week on maintenance and infrastructure issues. It leaves them little time to focus on more core responsibilities and impacts their productivity. Serverless architecture can improve developers’ productivity. To begin with, developers can save time on installing and maintaining servers. They don’t have to worry about managing multithreading or HTTP requests in the code. It simplifies backend software development and allows developers to build apps to meet customer demands. In fact, faster responses and workflows will help them launch apps in hours instead of weeks or months.

Easy to scale

Next-gen applications need servers that can scale easily depending on their usage. Physical servers may not be able to scale quickly and could get overwhelmed by the sudden surge in usage. That’s why companies used to purchase more servers that often went unutilized. Research shows that there were almost 10 million comatose servers worldwide. Companies must invest in a serverless architecture to improve scalability and deliver an uninterrupted experience to customers. It will automatically scale and provision the infrastructure when the requests and usage increase. The provider can run the server as soon as the requests increase during peak time.

More innovations

Companies need to innovate at scale to stay ahead of the competition and meet the ever-changing customer needs. For that to happen, they need to free up their development team to build the product. That’s where serverless architecture help. Developers can spend time building the application instead of maintaining the infrastructure and generating revenue for companies. In fact, 21% of companies cited innovation as one of the greatest business benefits of serverless architecture. Mike Deck, the principal solutions architect at AWS says, “Serverless computing allows development teams to devote more time to core products and allows them to build scalable, reliable systems more quickly and easily than when using server-based architectures.”

Faster go-to-market

Markets and customer demands change rapidly. Companies have mounting pressure to launch new products or new product features to thrive in a hyper-competitive market. They have to be agile and responsive to changes to stay relevant. Developers cannot afford to spend time on managing complex infrastructures. They need to focus on developing the application. With the help of serverless architecture, developers can deploy and release applications faster (sometimes, within hours). They can choose whether they want to upload the codes all at once or one function at a time. There’s also scope for constant iterations. Developers have to just upload a new code without deploying an entire application. The changes will automatically be initiated without interrupting the users’ experience.

Supports DevOps

One of the major takeaways from the pandemic was that companies need to be agile to pivot and adapt to changes quickly. Companies with DevOps teams have demonstrated significant resilience and innovated despite several challenges. Companies using the DevOps approach must consider investing in a serverless architecture. Serverless architecture can take DevOps to the next level. DevOps teams work on modular services. Serverless architecture can support these services, enabling the team to develop and deploy codes. They don’t have to worry about managing the pipeline. The infrastructure can also be scaled automatically as productivity increases. Developers can also experiment more freely, roll back updates if needed, and switch versions due to the flexible serverless architecture.

Conclusion

Apart from these benefits, the serverless architecture supports API backends and microservices that are crucial components for building next-gen applications and responding to market changes quickly. It’s time that companies adopt serverless architecture to gain a competitive advantage. But before adopting it, companies need to assess their organizational and technical readiness. They need to work with an expert to avoid pitfalls and harness the full potential of this architecture.

At Sagacity, we provide end-to-end support in building next-gen apps to help companies meet their business goals successfully.

To know more about our offerings, contact us.

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