4 Reasons to Opt for Serverless Computing for Your Mid-Sized Venture

If you’re reading this article, chances are that you’ve heard about how serverless architecture reduces business costs and does other wonders. With all that hype around this technology, it’s a little bit difficult to see the tangible benefits for businesses and decide whether your organization should join the serverless revolution. 

In this article, let’s forget about buzzwords and talk about the real state of the technology as well as the practical benefits for small- and mid-sized businesses.

What Does Serverless Really Mean for Businesses?

Serverless is a cloud service model where the provider manages the execution of the code, as well as the allocation of servers. So, the name “serverless” is not 100 percent correct here because there’s still a server somewhere, the user just doesn’t have to perform its management and maintenance. 

In other words, the user of the serverless infrastructure delegates these tasks to the server providers, which eliminates a lot of routine tasks for developers. Now, they can focus on the what and why of deployment, without having to deal with technical issues. For businesses, this means that the workforce is focused on delivering excellent results. 

This sounds good, right? Faster software delivery and a minimum of routine technical tasks are definitely something that businesses can benefit from. In addition to this, companies also point out the following benefits, according to a recent survey by Hacker Moon.

Credit: HackerMoon

With that in mind, let’s talk a little bit more about them in more detail.

Reasons to Opt for Serverless Computing

More Manageable/Quicker Development of Software

A serverless approach to the development of applications is a more effective and efficient one for your business because it allows a quick deployment. In the traditional method, developers have to deal with a lot of tasks, including code uploading to the server and doing backend configuration. This makes quick updates, fixes, or feature expansion a time-consuming process. 

On the other hand, there’s no need to do that with serverless. If you’d like to deploy an app in the traditional environment, you may have to spend weeks and even months; however, the same task will be done in a matter of days or even hours with serverless infrastructure. 

By being able to upload all code at once or parts of code, developers can quickly release software products or make updates easily. This also means they have more time to focus on user experience and making the product as good as possible.

No wonder 42 percent of the surveyed companies by Hacker Moon considered this to be the main benefit, right?

Automatic Scalability

With scalability being one of the most important considerations for quality app deployment, serverless can come in handy and save a lot of unnecessary work for your business. In the traditional configuration, you have to make a choice whether to provide the infrastructure to ensure that the app can handle large volumes of users, which also requires additional investments.

If you don’t provide the infrastructure, the app won’t be prepared for success, so it’ll stop working it the user base suddenly grows. Since it has a fixed amount of space on a server, it’ll become overwhelmed by an abrupt increase in usage. 

On the other hand, serverless is inherently scalable, so you won’t face the choice of providing the infrastructure. The apps built with this technology will scale automatically as the number of users grows, thus eliminating the worst-case scenario of being overwhelmed by usage requests. 

In fact, regardless of how complex the execution is, the serverless technology will make sure that it runs because it scales the app infinitely. 

Scalability is especially relevant for startups and mid-sized businesses that may need to change their focus or make a lot of updates to their applications to meet the needs of different target audiences. For example, if your management decides to revamp an application to target new users, you’ll be able to do that easily because of the unlimited scaling.

Not only you’ll be able to continuously improve or revise your product, but also increase your market reach thanks to easier pivoting ensured by serverless computing. 

Therefore, choosing this approach to deploying and scaling apps is definitely more economically reasonable for a business looking for cost-effective solutions.

Speaking of cost-effectiveness…

Cost Reduction

Essentially, serverless computing means outsourcing a lot of tasks. To avoid doing server management and maintenance-related processes, your business pays to have them done, which also means reducing many business costs. 

For example, in the traditional server configuration, your business has to pay for the allocated resources, even if you don’t use them. In many cases, you have to pay the cost of cloud services on an hourly basis, which often translates into thousands of dollars. 

On the other hand, if you opt for serverless infrastructure, you’ll pay only for the execution of your code and services, which means no costs if you’re not using any computing capabilities. In other words, you only pay per use, so if no one is using your application or another digital product, it costs you nothing. 

Also, you’ll save some money that you otherwise would have spent on paying the salaries of developers responsible for hosting and maintenance. 

According to the abovementioned Hacker Moon survey, the average cost reduction in companies that adopted serverless was about 20 percent monthly. For businesses with limited budgets, this could be a huge money saver. 

Since paying for serverless solutions is a cheaper alternative, more and more businesses are investing in the technology. In fact, the global serverless architecture market is projected to reach $14.93 billion by 2023, which represents a significant increase from the 2018’s value of $4.25 billion. 

This fact becomes even more surprising, given that most companies using serverless today began experimenting with the technology only two years ago.

Reduced Time to Market

Since deploying and maintaining a digital product with serverless architecture becomes more comfortable and faster, you can transform business ideas and concepts into reality within much shorter time frames. Moreover, the technology also allows you to run multiple instances of code. Therefore, you have more opportunities for software testing and identifying what works best for intended users.

Creating entirely usable prototypes of apps is, without a doubt, a significant benefit for your developers, as they need to test the product before it’s delivered to customers. As a result, continuous testing should increase the chances that the product will be well-received by intended users as well as minimize the risk of last-minute errors and issues. 

For example, if you need to develop a new feature for your application, the traditional model could require days or even weeks for developing, testing, and deploying. On the other hand, the serverless architecture allows doing the same in a matter of hours, as it takes minutes to provide serverless services with scaling, error response, and so on. 

This is especially useful for businesses that need to experiment with different software ideas and quickly test them to define the best product to develop. 

The Bottom Line

Clearly, the adoption of serverless technology can provide your mid-sized online venture with a lot of benefits. The reports suggest that the global serverless market is growing, which suggests the fact that more and more business leaders realize the potential of technology to solve many IT-related problems and reduce costs. 

Hopefully, this guide was an excellent introduction to the world of serverless computing for you and inspired you to explore more about how to take advantage of this technology. As more investors and developers claim about the economic benefits of serverless, its functionality and security should also continuously improve. 

The future of serverless seems to be bright in the business world, so it makes perfect sense to check out what it can do for you and your venture.