Download this slide deck here: https://www.thorntech.com/serverless-slide-deck-download-page/ Serverless is an increasingly popular approach to software development that is set to explode in 2017. This presentation goes over: 1) What serverless is 2) What cloud providers provide serverless services 3) What companies use this approach 4) What the pros and cons of serverless are, and 5) What the future of serverless might look like Check it out and let us know what you think!

2. Serverless is a software development
approach where the execution of code
is fully managed by a cloud provider,
and the compute power only exists
when requested and disappears after
the task is completed.
Servers are still involved, they’re just
managed by your cloud provider and
are not always running.
What is Serverless?
Example courtesy of Amazon Web Services

3. AWS Lambda
Azure
Functions
Google Cloud
Functions
IBM OpenWhisk
...and probably many others.
Who offers serverless frameworks?

4. Netflix implemented AWS Lambda to:
● Encode media files – they set up rules that trigger
events when media assets are uploaded and moved
through the encoding process. Events are fired to track,
aggregate, validate, tag, and publish these media assets
to their content delivery network.
● Back up files for disaster recovery – Lambda rules
decide what files need to be backed up and copied to
offsite storage, validate that these backups have been
executed, and raise flags in the case where files have not
been properly backed up.
● Secure their assets – Lambda helps them validate that
their infrastructure is secure and fires events when
unauthorized instances appear.
● Monitor their environment – Lambda events trigger the
creation of new alerts and dashboards so Netflix can
easily and auto-magically monitor the ever-changing
state of their infrastructure.
Serverless Case Study

5. Pros of
Serverless

6. 1. Pay only for what you use
You don’t have to pay for idle server
time, and only pay for the time that
your app uses the server.
Pros of Serverless

7. 2. Make your app elastic
Your app can automatically scale up
to accommodate spikes in traffic,
and scale down when there are
fewer concurrent users.
Pros of Serverless

8. 3. Spend less time and money on
managing servers
Allow you to spend less money and
time managing servers, because
most of the work will be done for you
by your cloud computing provider.
Pros of Serverless

9. 4. Reduce development time and time
to market
Your developers don’t need to worry
about deploying, managing, and
scaling servers. There are no
operating systems they need to
select, secure, or patch.
Pros of Serverless

10. 5. Fits well with microservices
Developers don’t have to worry
about provisioning and
managing servers, each
microservice can scale almost
instantly, and the team can build
each piece of the product faster.
Pros of Serverless

11. Cons of
Serverless

12. 1. No real roadmap or standards
Different approaches from cloud
services providers, varying methods
of integrating different programming
languages and frameworks, and
different applications will use
serverless in different ways.
Cons of Serverless

13. 2. Higher latency in responding
to application events
Cons of Serverless
● Because the server sits idle until a certain
application event occurs, it may take some
time to “wake up” and execute the command.
● Not ideal for apps and sites where page load
speed is absolutely essential, such as
e-commerce, social media, and search sites.

14. Cons of Serverless
3. Not all programming languages
are fully supported
Many languages still lack full
support from the major
serverless players.

15. Cons of Serverless
4. Hiring serverless experts is
expensive
Because serverless is relatively new,
experts are hard to find and
expensive to hire.

16. Cons of Serverless
5. Vendor lock-in is a risk
Moving to another cloud provider
may call for major code changes.

17. Cons of Serverless
6. Inefficient for long-running or
continuous communication tasks
Because of its event-based nature, a
serverless architecture might not be
the best fit for applications that
execute long-running tasks, such as
an online game.

18. The Future of Serverless
More companies will jump on the serverless bandwagon and integrate it into their apps
More standards will be created and more programming languages will be supported, so
more developers can easily use the platform and become proficient with the technology.
Problems with latency and efficiency will continue to be addressed.

19. About Us
• AWS Certified Partner
• Founded in 2008
• 14 employees & contractors
• Based in Columbia, MD
• Key clients include:
• Sprint
• VMware
• Experient
• Zeta Interactive
• HERE Maps

20. Thorn Technologies Cloud Expertise
• Cloud Infrastructure Deployment
• We architect and deploy public, private, and hybrid
clouds that power enterprise software and mobile apps.
• We focus on leveraging the cloud for scalable,
high-volume, high-transaction enterprise systems.
• Cloud Migration
• We seamlessly migrate existing enterprise applications
and data to the cloud.
• We then optimize these apps for speed, performance,
and scale, and ensure they fully leverage the power of
the cloud.
• Automated Scaling and Monitoring
• We help automate cloud deployment, scaling, and
monitoring processes to make IT operations more
efficient.
• Enterprise Software Development
• We have more than 25 years of experience building
enterprise software systems.
• Our expertise is in developing mobile and
location-based content management systems,
high-volume transactional systems, messaging
software, alert systems, data warehouses, user
analytics platforms, and more.
• Our experience spans many industries such as
Telecom, Financial, Government, Entertainment,
Hospitality, and others.
• Software Development Process Improvement
• We help improve your software development
process to embrace the cloud.
• We set up tools, processes, and systems to facilitate
continuous integration and agile development of
cloud-native apps.

21. Any questions?
Visit us at thorntech.com/cloudcall
to schedule a free consultation with
one of our cloud computing experts.
Mike Chan
mike@thorntech.com
www.thorntech.com
@thorntech