Serverless Computing Likely to Grow in 2020

NASDAQ Tech Leader: Serverless Computing Likely to Grow in 2020

Discover why a recent NASDAQ report touts serverless computing, machine-to-machine communication and real-time data as major business drivers for 2020.

Serverless computing is poised to make transformational changes in the platform-as-a-service market in 2020, according to a recent trends report issued by NASDAQ,

With the continued growth of cloud-based computing solutions providing more affordable options for businesses of all sizes, serverless computing is likely to continue to drive change.

What Is Serverless Computing?

Like with most other cloud-based technologies, serverless computing involves third-party providers that offer backend services that can be accessed on-demand. With serverless computing, cloud servers are allocated dynamically, allowing users to pay as they go. This means companies can pay for resources consumed by an application rather via pre-measured capacity units.

Serverless computing is primarily used in application development. Companies can write, test and deploy code faster and simpler. Companies pay for the number of computations made, instead of having to reserve and pay a fixed amount of bandwidth or servers.

Think of serverless computing as the third wave of resource allocation for application development. In the early days of the web, companies needed to own the physical hardware needed to run a server. This was a highly inefficient and expensive proposition for companies.

The second wave was the onset of cloud computing, whereby developers would need to rent enough server space to handle spikes in traffic or activity in excess of monthly allotments, both of which could break apps. Businesses end up buying excess cloud server space that mostly goes unused.

Serverless computing is the third wave. The pay-as-you-go-model shifts the capacity burden to the vendor, which has to manage and maintain the servers and infrastructure, meaning developers don’t have to worry about traffic bursts disrupting apps and services to their customers.

What Are the Benefits of Serverless Computing?

With serverless computing, companies gain flexibility and control. Among the core benefits are:

• Cost Reduction. Serverless computing is cost-effective, reducing the amount of idle CPU time or unused capacity that companies need to sink money.
• Enhanced Scalability. Code developers are freed of the burden of understanding capacity and policies around hitting physical or cloud capacity limits. Instead, the cloud vendor offering serverless services manages to scale on demand.
• Simplified Code Development. Using the functionality of serverless computing, coders can more easily develop, test and deploy code.
• Faster Turnaround. With serverless computing companies can bring new apps to market faster, simplifying the process to deploy new features, squash bugs, add new code and modify existing code, especially if using a sandbox that can replicate reduce friction in the testing process. By parsing out applications into smaller functions, updates, fixes and patches can be deployed faster, with corrections passed on to portions of the application, not the entire application at once.
• Less Latency. With serverless computing, applications are not hosted on one server. COde can be run virtually from anywhere. This process reduces latency because user requests do not all have to run back to and through the origin server.

What Does Serverless Computing Mean in 2020?

The NASDAQ report touts the utility of serverless computing with another emerging code development trend — low code no code (LCNC) development. With LCNC, developers can build and test apps using drag-and-drop technologies that piece portions of apps together.

“It is fascinating to watch these technologies converge into the solution for the future,” the report notes.

The NASDAQ report highlights other technologies and trends to watch for in 2020:

• Machine-to-Machine Communication (M2M): M2M computing allows businesses to generate, store and analyze massive amounts of data in real-time, without human interaction.
• Business in Real-Time: Sourcing and processing data in real-time allows for better customer experiences. Technology that was primarily developed for streaming services is now being used in other business applications.
• The Platform Economy: Serverless computing, APIs and platforms-as-a-service allow data to be integrated into new ways, driving innovation and differentiation.

Collectively, these technologies stand poised to help businesses take advantage of “the explosion of data,” in capital markets, noted Brad Peterson, Nasdaq’s chief technology and information officer, in a Wall Street Journal article. “The place to process it the most cost-effectively and with the best tools happens to be the cloud,” Peterson said.

Other industries are also going to spend time in 2020 looking to take advantage of serverless computing and related technologies. At Centerpoint, we help Atlanta-area companies find solutions that use technology to meet pressing business needs. To learn more about how Centerpoint can deliver IT solutions for your business, contact us today.