Why CIOs Must Consider Serverless Computing?

There is an increasing trend for born-in-the-cloud companies to adopt a serverless-first approach to software development. Serverless computing enables rapid assembly of reusable software functions and software triggers independent of the underlying infrastructure. Popular examples of serverless providers include Amazon Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, IBM Cloud Functions, IBM RedHat Knative, and Microsoft Azure Functions.

Serverless computing is a new paradigm that provides massive scalability and agility to accelerate your digital transformation journey. -Khwaja Shaik, IBM Thought Leader

Digital is driving the integration of serverless computing with both Kubernetes-based and legacy applications. Serverless computing can be functions or backend as a service. Functions are nothing but an individual piece of code or programming logic.

Typical use cases of serverless computing include back-end APIs, web applications, serverless websites, process automation, and integration across the ecosystem. So, what is driving the serverless computing paradigm? And why should CIOs keep this as a priority on their digital transformation journey? Here are the four main reasons:

1. Agility. Serverless simplifies cloud-native application development for event-driven business processes, enables faster development, and hands-off provisioning. You can host any browser-based application to run seamlessly. Your developer can just focus on user experience and business logic without worrying about non-functional requirements such as architecture, scalability, or performance, reducing the need for reskilling.
2. Elasticity and high availability across networks. The benefits arise from the automation of underlying infrastructure through autoscaling. Serverless computing is a sweet spot for the financial services industry (compared to manufacturing) since they require globally distributed #agile services. You can avoid the times when the resources are over-provisioned due to fewer requests. You can avoid the times when the resources are under-provisioned due to many requests.
3. Cost-effectiveness. You can carve out functions more efficiently (and cheaply) via event-based triggers rather than with always-on resources. You can achieve ultra cost savings of up to 90% by shifting from CAPEX to OPEX. You don't need to burn cash and energy by having VMs sitting idle. With this fine-grained pricing model, you can invoke functions when needed, operating on a pay-per-use rather than pay-per-provision basis. Users cannot over- or under-provision capacity. Users never pay for idle time.
4. Higher productivity, developer-friendly, and faster software roll-out. Grappling with Kubernetes configurations is a challenge in itself. With serverless computing, you can roll-out the software faster by lightening the infrastructure dependencies and streamlining the IT processes. The serverless computing model is portable, easy to debug, and can be tested locally.

Serverless is a sweet spot for stateless, AI-infused event driven distributed workloads including embedded AI, and event based IoT use cases. Serverless makes the public cloud better, and cheaper to scale innovation. But don't expect it to replace containers completely. -Khwaja Shaik, IBM Thought Leader

Conclusion

Serverless computing is a valuable tool for CIOs to transform their IT operations and scale innovation. Cloud providers manage the server functions such as server management, capacity planning decisions, and allocation of machine resources instead of developers or operators. It is imperative for CIOs to provide the right tools to developers so that they can spend more time on driving business outcomes through application business logic.

As a CIO, your goal must be to simplify application development and ingest rapid velocity by making cloud resources easy to use for developers. Serverless Computing is a sweet spot for scaling innovation. -Khwaja Shaik, IBM Thought Leader

The success of your digital transformation depends on your ability to provide secure, low-cost, highly scalable, and easy-to-use alternatives to today's proprietary environments. Don't delay to run cloud-native applications where billing is done based on resources consumed rather than pre-provisioned capacity. Finally, driving business outcomes and continuous cost optimization should be your mantra in this COVID-19 era.

Pick and choose the right use case for the cost effective serverless computing solution. Your architecture decision, and cloud organization model should drive your selection. -Khwaja Shaik, IBM Thought Leader

Question

Where are you on your serverless computing journey in this COVID-19 era? Are you understanding the strengths and weaknesses of serverless and container models? What challenges have you faced and what has not worked? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

ABOUT KHWAJA SHAIK

Khwaja Shaik is the award-winning global IT Executive with 25+ years of business technology leadership with IBM, Bank of America, PwC, and GE. He has a worldwide reputation and proven track record in driving digital transformation and the newest innovations.

As IBM’s Thought Leader, Khwaja’s role is to help clients stay ahead of the digital disruption curve by leveraging Design Thinking, Cloud, IoT, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, and Quantum Computing. Khwaja is among the most exceptional IBMers appointed with the rare distinction of IBM Academy of Technology member. Top 100 technical leaders providing the direction of IBM with innovation that matters.

As a strong proponent of talent development, Khwaja serves as IBM’s Design Thinking Coach for IBM’s Developer Jumpstart Program, IBM’s BlueHack Mentor driving innovation, and IBM’s Blockchain Mentor to spur the blockchain ecosystem.

Khwaja also serves as McKinsey Global Institute’s Executive Panel Member, MIT Sloan CIO Forum Member, Gartner’s Research Circle Member, MarketsANDMarkets Advisor, and HBR’s Advisory Council Member driving global thought leadership.

As a global influencer, Khwaja frequently blogs on exponential technologies at IBM, LinkedIn, and Twitter. With his passion for interfaith and nurturing global talent in STEM, he serves on the Advisory Boards of Interfaith Center of Northeast Florida and Museum of Science & History, and University of North Florida’s Computing Advisory Board.

Recipient of outstanding service awards from the University of North Florida, Bank of America, IBM, and Indo US Chamber of Commerce of Northeast Florida. He is frequently interviewed for industry insights or cited in the news, Thought Leadership POVs, and blogs on disruptive technologies.

Khwaja holds an MBA and Engineering degree. He is a frequent speaker on exponential technologies at various forums including CIO IT, & Security Forum, MHI Supply Chain Conference, IIT Hyderabad, and Indo US Chamber of Commerce of Northeast Florida.

More details on Khwaja’s career and thought leadership activities can be found via Linkedin, Khwajashaik.com or follow him on Twitter @Khwaja_Shaik

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies, or opinions."