Serverless Architecture: Why You Should Use One + Pros and Cons

Serverless architecture offers a way for businesses to streamline their operations by handling application tasks on demand without the need for dedicated infrastructure management. In a serverless setup, cloud providers manage the underlying resources, so businesses can focus on their applications rather than on server upkeep. Serverless doesn’t mean “no servers”—rather, it means developers don’t need to handle server management directly.

We’ll help you gain a deeper understanding of serverless architecture, its pros and cons, and detail why you should consider going serverless in this article.

Serverless architecture or serverless computing, helps to streamline development by allowing developers to build applications, without having to manage the infrastructure. With serverless architecture, cloud providers handle the provisioning and management of the resources. There are still servers, but going serverless takes away the developer’s interaction and management with the servers.

Consider a medical device manufacturer. Orders come in from hospitals all day, and each night, the company generates reports to track inventory levels and predict future needs. Traditionally, this process would require a dedicated server, running continuously, even though it only processes data occasionally. But with serverless, reports are generated only when needed, saving on infrastructure costs by operating on a pay-per-use basis.

In this way, serverless architecture transforms the efficiency of application management. By shifting from a model of constant operation to event-driven processing, businesses can adapt resources to meet actual demand. Serverless offers an effective solution for companies aiming to reduce idle infrastructure costs and scale quickly in response to workload changes.

Popular Serverless Providers

Amazon Web Services (AWS Lambda), Microsoft Azure Functions, and Google Cloud Run are all serverless computing platforms that allow developers to build and run applications without managing servers. While these models have many similarities, there are some differences between them.

AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, and Google Cloud Run all offer automatic scaling and pay-per-use pricing. For businesses deeply integrated into specific ecosystems, the choice of provider can hinge on compatibility with parent services. For example, Azure Functions integrates with Office tools and other Microsoft products, making it ideal for workflows involving those services.

AWS Lambda is ideal for event-driven architectures and real-time data processing. Azure Functions excels in HTTP-triggered APIs and custom workflows, while Google Cloud Run is optimized for containerized applications, providing flexibility and portability for modern development practices.

How Serverless Works

Serverless computing works by moving the provisioning, scaling, and management of resources to cloud providers. Developers write code for the server's functions. When an event occurs, like HTTP requests, database changes, or file uploads, the cloud provider runs the appropriate function. The cloud provider can automatically scale resources to match demand. Billing is typically based on actual usage, meaning developers pay for the resources consumed by their functions.

The greatest benefit of a serverless architecture comes down to the ability of developers to separate out operation functions into their own instances.  This can lead to a number of downstream benefits from easier troubleshooting of an application when there are issues to simplified release and update routines since updates can be applied to just the functions that are changing.

There are many benefits of serverless computing that are useful to businesses and developers. This model is popular because it helps simplify and automate development processes.

Cost Efficiency

Serverless computing provides cost efficiency for businesses because it operates on a pay-as-you-go model. This helps businesses avoid the costs associated with buying and maintaining hardware, including paying for idle capacity times. Serverless architecture platforms also can automatically scale up or down based on demand, which promotes cost savings.

Automatic Scalability

Being able to automatically scale resources up or down is a key benefit of serverless architecture. This is because the platforms can adjust the number of function instances based on demand without manual intervention. This eliminates the need for developers to predict capacity in advance and promotes efficiency.

Faster Time to Market

Serverless computing accelerates the development process which helps bring products and features to market more quickly. By eliminating the need to manage infrastructure, developers can focus on writing and deploying code. This streamlined process promotes quicker updates and more agility in responding to customer or market demands.

Improved Productivity

A serverless architecture model can also increase and improve productivity. This is because developers can focus on writing code, instead of managing infrastructure. Being able to offload tasks like server maintenance and updates to a cloud provider frees up time and resources.

Reliability

With serverless architecture, companies are able to pass off managing infrastructure operations like server maintenance, load balancing, and redundancy. Additionally, many serverless platforms have built-in monitoring and alert tools allowing teams to catch and resolve any issues quickly. These elements and functions improve the overall reliability of these systems allowing companies to react quickly and recover faster from any unexpected events.

Global Availability

Serverless architecture is a powerful solution for achieving global availability. By using the vast network of cloud providers’ data centers, serverless functions can be deployed across multiple regions worldwide. This geographic distribution helps reduce the impact of possible regional outages.

As you can see from the outlined benefits above, serverless architecture is well-suited to companies that need cost efficiency, scalability, and agility. For organizations looking to optimize costs, serverless architecture is ideal for variable workloads, such as e-commerce sites that experience seasonal spikes or media websites with fluctuating demand. Because serverless charges only for the compute time used, businesses can avoid paying for idle server capacity, making it cost-effective.

Serverless architecture is also perfect for event-driven applications, where functions can respond to triggers like file uploads, database updates, or HTTP requests. This makes serverless computing particularly useful for workflows like order processing systems, data pipelines, or notification services.

While serverless architecture offers significant benefits, it also comes with some challenges and limitations. One key issue is cold starts, which occur when a function is called after being idle for a period, resulting in a delay while resources are allocated and slowing response times.

Another drawback is vendor lock-in, as serverless functions are often tailored to a specific provider’s platform, making it challenging to migrate if pricing or policies change. Debugging serverless functions can also be more complex compared to traditional applications, as the execution environment is managed by the cloud provider.

How to Overcome Serverless Challenges

To mitigate the challenges associated with serverless architecture, several strategies can be employed. For instance, cold starts can be addressed through techniques like provisioned concurrency or warm-up functions, ensuring rapid response times. Complex debugging can be simplified by leveraging cloud provider-specific debugging tools, logging services, and monitoring metrics. Additionally, execution time limitations can be overcome by breaking down long-running tasks into smaller functions.

Serverless architecture and traditional server-based architecture offer different approaches to handling applications and workloads. In a server-based architecture, applications run on dedicated physical or virtual servers, which require management, operating system updates, and scaling to meet demand. In server architecture, developers manage the entire server infrastructure, from hardware to software, responsible for provisioning, scaling, and maintaining servers. This provides granular control but requires significant overhead.

Serverless architecture, on the other hand, offloads infrastructure management to a cloud provider. Developers write and deploy functions as individual units, and the cloud provider automatically allocates and scales resources as needed. This eliminates the need for server management, reducing operational complexity and enabling rapid development and deployment. While serverless offers benefits like scalability and cost-efficiency, it has some limitations regarding control and potential vendor lock-in.

SPR collaborated with divvyDOSE, a full-service pharmacy, to build a serverless, event-driven application that automated manual controlled substance prescription reporting, demonstrating how serverless architecture can scale businesses and reduce costs.

SPR successfully automated divvyDOSE’s reporting processes for all 50 states, by developing a user-friendly administrative application to harvest prescription transaction information from divvyDOSE. From there, it filtered the transactions by state, by required drugs to be reported, and by required reporting information fields, converted the filtered transactions to the state-specified ASAP format, and then securely transferred the ASAP files to each state.

Prior to this project, the client was manually generating ASAP reports, an effort that was labor intensive and costly. By employing an event-driven serverless application structure, SPR assisted divvyDOSE in reducing expenditures on servers and compute time. divvyDOSE has been positive and enthusiastic about the overall outcome of the project.

Serverless architecture empowers businesses to reduce infrastructure costs and focus on innovation. By eliminating the need for dedicated server management, serverless allows companies to scale efficiently and pay only for active processing time, creating cost savings and operational agility.

SPR can help you with your custom software and serverless solutions needs. Contact our team today to get started.