The worries of scaling up resources or managing operations should never get in the way of focusing on business important tasks for any successful enterprise. But when managing the server space, allocating resources, and overlooking the security have to go hand-in-hand with regular business, companies have to expend additional resources, whether it be personnel, money, or time. Naturally, this robs organizations of precious time that they can otherwise utilize for key deliverables that will take the business forward.
Dedicated servers have hence become too resource-intensive, causing additional setbacks, such as an inability to scale fast. Hosting solutions have therefore come up with many services and offerings that would help free up developer time by taking up much of the server management duties upon themselves.
Services such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) have made cloud migration easy. While each of these has its unique advantages in managing server space and expenditure, serverless computing has emerged as the least worrisome option for cloud adoption in recent years.
Serverless computing is a relatively new offering that takes away a major chunk of the customer’s responsibility in managing the security, maintenance, and availability, among other operations.
Serverless computing does not mean that servers are no longer used, but it simply means that businesses can function as though the servers do not exist, purely in terms of managing the processes. Therefore, the development can be focused on the product and not the infrastructure.
Advantages of a serverless model in optimizing cloud architecture 
Serverless computing provides the flexibility and scalability of cloud architecture to the full extend, just as one of our clients used it to support their service stability while migrating to the cloud.
The global taxation firm was interested in moving their services to the cloud, without worrying about the infrastructure suitability.
Serverless computing architecture provided great scalability, reduced costs, quicker releases, and flexibility for the client’s service platform. Innominds helped them to develop the back-end serverless cloud-enabled platform for a customer portal.
The platform was enabled by a cost-effective and user-friendly cloud architecture. The platform served to help scale up and optimize the cloud readiness assessment and cloud migration service for customers.
The serverless model lent the organization with some unique capabilities, which includes:
Less infrastructure management
Serverless computing inherently offloads the infrastructure management to the hosting providers. These responsibilities are far advanced than the usual Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), and better than (Function-as-a-Service) FaaS, which is sometimes used interchangeably with ‘serverless’.
Responsibilities such as maintaining the physical servers, access to server space and hardware, security configuration, testing, authentication, and network protection are then left to the host. However, the customer will still have the liberty to administer user authentication, maintain inventory, deploy application-level firewalls, monitor third-party involvement, etc.
Increased scalability
The serverless model provides the customers with increased flexibility to scale up or down according to changing business needs. When there is less traffic to your platform, serverless cuts down on space allocation, or vice versa, which takes off the pain of acute planning for resources from the start of cloud migration.
Choice of language/technology
Serverless computing services, such as AWS Lambda, allow customers to operate in multiple languages (Java, Python, Go, Node.js, etc.). It not only manages the infrastructure but also the code.
Faster time to market
Since resource allocation takes a backseat in the serverless model of working, you can quickly implement new functions and features and bring them to the market.
Reduced developer involvement
Remember the last time your product development stopped midway because the developers had to manage the operations? That will not be a recurring issue with serverless, as development can progress uninterrupted without issues with infrastructure processes.
Cost-effectiveness
Needless to say, paying for only the compute time you consume lets customers save big bucks on unused compute power. The servers start within milliseconds of when the usage beings.
Deploying AWS Lambda and microservices for a serverless platform
AWS Lambda is one of the few services that provides serverless management that allows continuous scaling of resources.
Innominds deployed AWS Lambda to support the client in enhancing and strengthening the infrastructure and assessing the suitability of cloud migration for their customers. The platform needed a cost-effective and user-friendly cloud architecture to scale up and optimize the cloud readiness assessment and migration service.
The serverless computing architectures provide great scalability, reduced costs, quicker releases, and flexibility, unlike regular hosting services. Innominds helped the client in developing the back-end serverless cloud-enabled platform for the client portal.
The platform supported key functions such as cloud suitability, the total cost of ownership, and an explanation of benefits using data visualization.
Innominds developed the serverless architecture through which we were able to perform the following with the platform:
- Support cloud placement decision
- Financial cost analysis
- Data visualization
- Secure data storage
- API management
Serverless architecture deployments took off the weight from the client’s shoulders by managing all server needs and meeting the required specifications through automatic and event-driven technologies.
The improvised platform with the serverless foundation gave the client the ability to provide value-added services to the usage practitioners. Innominds also helped them achieve better decision-making on cloud migration and readiness assessment for the customers.
Additionally, the client improved the application performance with increased uptime. Platform engagement also increased with better visualization capabilities and a user-friendly layout.
Basically, a serverless architecture stands miles apart in improved infrastructure reliability and security, as opposed to IaaS and PaaS. IaaS provides a separate virtual machine for ready infrastructure utilization and PaaS provides the application platform by separating the middleware layer and OS. But serverless goes on to abstract the entire programming layer without having to manage the cloud deployment.
To know more about cloud and DevOps deployment options and the different ways to manage your cloud infrastructure, check out Innominds’ Cloud Engineering services.
