Our webinar presents a critical analysis of serverless technology and our thoughts about its future. We use Emerging Technology Analysis Canvas (ETAC), a framework built to analyze emerging technologies, as the methodology of our study. Based on our analysis, we believe that serverless can significantly impact applications and software development workflows. We’ve also made two further observations: Limitations, such as tail latencies and cold starts, are not deal breakers for adoption. There are significant use cases that can work with existing serverless technologies despite these limitations. We see a significant gap in required tooling and IDE support, best practices, and architecture blueprints. With proper tooling, it is possible to train existing enterprise developers to program with serverless. If proper tools are forthcoming, we believe serverless can cross the chasm in 3-5 years. A detailed analysis can be found here: A Survey of Serverless: Status Quo and Future Directions. Join our webinar as we discuss this study, our conclusions, and evidence in detail.

1. Future of Serverless
Srinath Perera, Ph.D.
VP Research WSO2, Apache Member,
( srinath@wso2.com)
@srinath_perera

2. Complexity of Systems are Increasing
• Both Kubernetes and Service Mesh
have complex deployments
• (in return for more control)
• Microservices
• Complexity due to many services
and distributed nature
• Needs observability and complex
DevOps.
• Done in return for simpler releases
!2

3. !3
• Latency continues to be a problem
• Although bandwidth has improved,
latency has not. Our apps need to
think about latency for years to
come. (See [1]).
• If a web page has four API calls,
60% of users will see the 90th
percentile
• WAN latency = 300X latency within
a data center. See [2]
• API adoption is increasing. See [3].
• If your App uses APIs, you will get
much better latencies by moving to the
cloud. Due to the same reason, APIs are
also best placed in the cloud as well.
Latency Concerns

4. !4

5. FaaS changes Abstraction
• Before FaaS, although PaaS was there,
it is users have to drop down to IaaS to
write glue code and logic
• Amazon Lamda (FaaS) changed this
• FaaS changed the abstraction level, and
hide deployment, FT, Scale
complexities.
• Serverless reduces the detail a
programmer needs to understand,
expanding potential programmer Pool.
!5

6. What is Serverless?
• Everything = FaaS + Platform Services + Resources
!6
• Definition - Serverless includes
FaaS, resources (compute and
storage) as well as a complete
execution environment
including platform services
providing resource pooling,
rapid elasticity, and measured
service (as defined in the NIST
cloud computing definition) in
an opaque manner to the user.

7. Forces Driving Serverless
!7

8. Impact: Macro
• Serverless is a natural
environment to deploy
Microservices
Architecture
• Serverless makes it easier
to create APIs and APIs
nudges Apps towards
the cloud to avoid
latency effects
• A new user in the cloud
have a choice of using
Serverless vs. K8s
!8

9. Impact: Micro
• Increases agility: Serverless provides faster
time to delivery.
• Lowers platform costs: It provides a true,
pay-as-you-go model by eliminating idle
time costs.
• Lowers deployment costs: serverless lowers
development costs by taking over DevOps
and monitoring costs.
• Provides cost insights: serverless is metered
with fine granularity, which provides
greater insights into managing costs.
!9

10. Feasibility: Technical Merit
• (+)ve
• HA & Scale is transparent
• Make citizen programming easier
• Polyglot architecture possible
• (-)tive
• Cold starts and tail latencies
• EDA is hard
• Handling state
!10

11. Feasibility: Tools & Ecosystem
• Lack of tooling is a challenge
• We can quickly train existing
programmers. Hence, no significant
concerns about skills
!11

12. Feasibility: Friction
• Opinionated
• Limited OS and platform level
configurations available
• Need rewrite to move systems
!12

13. Risks
• Lack of standards and Vendor Lock-in
• Kubernetes acts as a portability
layer
• Lock-in happen due to the use of
platform services
• Users have to tradeoff between
agility and lock-in
• Was not a problem with the cloud
• Privacy
• Against it was not a significant
deterrence of the cloud
!13

14. Future
!14

15. Open Road for Serverless
• We see most new applications will
use Serverless within next three years
• Although the disadvantages and
risks we discussed might reduce the
adoption, we believe there are
significant use cases that are not
affected by those limitations.
• Shortage of developers will further
increase Serverless adoption
(Serverless reduces required skill
levels from programmers, expanding
the potential pool of developers).
!15

16. Vendor Lock-in & Standardization
• Vendor Lock-in & Standardization slows
down the adoption, but not a show stopper
• Current Serverless platform market leaders
are resisting standardization.
• However, adopting standards may expand
the market to a extent that everyone is better
off.
• Standardization can be enforced by
governments or significant buyers or
consortia. We believe, standardization, in any
form, is net positive and will significantly
hasten the adoption of Serverless.
!16

17. K8s vs. Serverless
• A new app in the cloud have a choice
between Serverless vs. Kubernetes
• It is a tradeoff between agility & cost
savings vs. portability & control.
• Most new systems would likely to
start with Serverless and only move to
Kubernetes when
• The system has grown complex
• When portability has becomes a
concern
• Serverless is expensive
• Kubernetes may choose to match
Serverless APIs
!17

18. Future of Middleware
• Serverless is replacing most middleware
• To compete with cloud providers middleware will become
more specialized (e.g. become domain specific)
• A new class of middleware can run on top of Serverless or
k8s.
• Cloud vendors may choose to embrace middleware running
on top of the clouds to have a richer ecosystem.
• e.g. Microsoft tied to own Windows software and failed
• Apple embraced developers and ecosystem became a
mote.
• Integration middleware will continue have on-premise use
cases because parts of systems (legacy) will continue to live
off the cloud
!18

19. Conclusion
• Most of the new Apps are moving to
the cloud
• We see most new applications will
use Serverless within next three years
• A new app in the cloud have a choice
between Serverless vs. Kubernetes,
which will decide the extent of
serverless adoption
!19

20. Read the paper
A Survey of Serverless: Status Quo and
Future Directions
To receive updates to ETAC and ETAC-based
emerging technology analysis, subscribe to
our Newsletter at
https://wso2.com/subscribe/gto.
Thanks for reading!!