There is a lot of hype around serverless architecture out there, and it is easy to see why. Serverless is an emerging technology and there are a lot of companies looking to capitalize on that. This can make it challenging for your business to navigate the various serverless providers and technologies, making it difficult for you to choose the best service for your project. You must also know the detailed difference between popular serverless architecture like AWS vs Azure vs Google

This post is for developers looking for a platform as a service solution. We will focus on reviewing some major players in the market that are worth considering when choosing your serverless architecture provider. But before jumping onto that, let us understand what serverless architecture means.

What is Serverless Architecture?

Serverless architecture has captured the imagination of developers and CIOs because it solves a lot of real-world problems that many organizations face daily. Developers can easily code and deploy applications, and they don’t have to worry about server management. Serverless also scales automatically, which means that you pay only for the resources you use, so costs are predictable. But to use serverless architecture effectively, you need to know your options and the developer tools out there so that you can choose the best provider for your organization’s needs.

Serverless architecture has already changed the way companies build apps. It has proven to be a reliable, low-cost, and scalable way to deliver software efficiently without worrying about scaling capacity or paying for idle instances. Now that it’s more established, serverless is becoming accessible as a service on more platforms so that even small startups with less funding can make use of its powerful capabilities.

Major Serverless Architecture Providers

AWS lambda

AWS Lambda is a serverless computing platform that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. AWS Lambda executes your code only when needed and scales automatically, from a few requests per day to thousands per second. You pay only for the compute time you consume – there is no charge when your code is not running.

With AWS Lambda, you can run code for virtually any type of application or backend service – all with zero administration. Just upload your code and Lambda takes care of everything required to run and scale your code with high availability. You can set up your code to automatically trigger from other AWS services or call it directly from any web or mobile app.

AWS Lambda runs your back-end code on its own AWS compute fleet of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances across multiple Availability Zones in a region, which provides high availability, security, performance, and scalability of the AWS infrastructure.

Azure Functions

Microsoft’s offering in this space is known as Azure Functions, which allows users to run code on-demand without having to explicitly provision or manage infrastructure. The Functions platform can be used for developing new functions or integrating with existing applications.

At its simplest, Azure Functions is an event-driven service that triggers a piece of user-defined code (a function) when a specific event occurs. This can be anything from a new email arriving in an inbox, data being added to a database, an app receiving an HTTP request or even something like a message queue being triggered. Once the event occurs and the associated code runs, it is released and the process ends.

The chief benefit of a serverless computing model is that it frees up your development team to focus on creating and deploying apps more quickly, rather than worrying about the underlying infrastructure. Azure Functions takes this a step further by letting you build event-driven applications that can trigger actions when certain events occur. For example, if you’re building an app that integrates with a calendar service, Azure Functions can automatically run code when a new entry is added to a calendar or when an existing entry changes. These types of triggers are the backbone of many modern clouds and mobile applications, and Azure Functions lets you add them without managing any infrastructure.

Google Cloud Functions

Google Cloud Functions is another serverless computing service that is available within the Google Cloud Platform. In a way, it is the competitor of AWS Lambda, but it has a different set of features and tools. The main purpose of Google Cloud Functions is to execute code in response to certain events that are triggered by other services. These functions can be written in JavaScript and they can run on Node.js 6.11 runtime environment. They are event-driven and therefore they can be used to respond to any kind of event, such as changes in data in Google Cloud Storage or Google Cloud Firestore or even HTTP requests.

You have a choice to use either JavaScript or TypeScript for writing your functions and you can also choose between Inline Editor and Zip Upload deployment options. Just like other serverless platforms, you don’t need to provide any resources for running your functions. Google Cloud Functions will do all the managing for you. You only have to specify how much memory you need for your function and Google will take care of everything else.

As far as scalability goes, there is no hard limit on the maximum number of concurrent executions that can be performed at once. Instead, there is a concurrency cap that prevents more than 1000 concurrent executions from happening at once.

Takeaway

To summarize, serverless architecture is the right fit for projects that can benefit from a zero-management overhead and that require flexibility. Serverless architecture is not recommended if your business is hampered by strict processing times or fine-tuned management of systems. Despite this, serverless architecture offers a compelling set of benefits that can lead to a more scalable, efficient, and agile IT infrastructure.

All of these providers have their pros and cons and deciding which service is right for you will depend largely on your business needs. As with any technology solution, you should thoroughly test each provider to see which product best fits your project’s goals, scale requirements, and timeline. Several factors can impact your choice including security, data management, cost flexibility, broad platform support, development workflows, analytics, collaboration tools, and enterprise-grade support.