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How well are you using Cloud? Sounds like a useless question. But, you will be surprised to know that most companies are still stuck with the traditional cloud models. They bank heavily upon servers and pay money even when they are not using them.
Even while speaking to developers, I sense they are bogged down with the task of updating servers and queuing requests. They often find it difficult to focus completely on coding and solving customer problems. Does this mean that Cloud is not living up to its promise? Lets’ step-back in time to answer this question.
Changing shape
In the early days, Cloud helped companies to break away from servers and move their data to third party servers. Life was simple then as the developers were just required to move legacy applications to Cloud servers and develop applications. However, the arrival of Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data changed the shape of business.
Over the last few years, we have all heard about concepts like fit bits, automated homes and so on. All these concepts are built around IoT technologies which relay billions of data points continuously to Cloud servers. To give you an idea, if you consider one byte of data as a gallon of water, there would be enough water to fill an average house in 10 seconds today. By 2020 it will take only 2 seconds! (Source: https://www.versatek.com/blog/how-much-data-will-the-internet-of-things-iot-generate-by-2020/)
In this scenario, companies can no longer manage the huge volume of data with traditional Cloud models. Developers have to spend a lot of time to maintain servers and even compromise with speed. Moreover, companies have to pay for servers irrespective of the time for which they are used.
Move the server out of the picture
Serverless technologies help companies to overcome this problem. The basic tenant of these technologies is that the Cloud providers manage the server infrastructure, including provisioning and updating, allowing developers to focus on writing codes.
With features like Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS), developers can harness a pool of application interface to create apps, without bothering about the back-end. Companies only pay for the time they use the servers as there is no compute cost when the servers are idle.
Serving the customers
With serverless technologies, companies can also respond quickly to customer needs. For instance, a major beverage company recently offered its customers a new feature where they could tap their mobile phones on a vending machine and earn points for each purchase. However, customers were not getting exact credits on their phones after a purchase.
To solve this problem, developers processed millions of transactions globally and fixed the problem quickly. The fact that serverless technologies are event based helped developers to process the huge amount of data quickly.
This is just one example of how serverless technologies are helping companies to become more responsive to customer needs and scale at will.
For technology leaders, it is important to invest in serverless technologies as Cloud will not offer them a competitive advantage anymore. Almost every company is on Cloud now and it is important to think about technology in a different way. Serverless technologies give them a perfect opportunity.
