What is Next in Serverless?

What started with “there must be servers somewhere” has changed to “What’s next for serverless?”. Our CEO, Jeevan Dongre, explored the serverless trajectory with industry leaders Sheen Brisals, Gunnar Grosch, Shilpa, and Eric Johnson in Serverless Days.

Beyond the Buzzword

We don’t talk about the invention of the light bulb every time we turn on a light. Similarly, the evolution of serverless architecture has become less visible as it becomes more foundational. This ubiquity is already evident.

Managed services like Amazon S3 or SQS have operated as “serverless service” for years, long before the term became a tech jargon. As Sheen observes, “Serverless is no longer just a buzzword… it will exist without boldly stating it”

Today, serverless technologies are so embedded in cloud services that they don’t need to proclaim their existence. The shift shows how technology has become a natural part of how people consume technology and how tools often become invisible in their effectiveness.

Getting Started with Serverless

For teams considering serverless adoption, start with these practical steps:

1. Identify stateless processes in your architecture that can be converted to functions
2. Begin with simple use cases like API endpoints or scheduled tasks
3. Use managed services like AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, or Google Cloud Functions
4. Implement proper monitoring and observability from day one

From Hype to Mainstream

Serverless has become part of the DNA of modern architectures, powering solutions across industries. This widespread adoption renders it so common that it makes the need for explicit labels less relevant.

As Gunnar Grosch observes, “I think the future of serverless is going to be a natural part of what we do. We are still going to pick and choose the services we want to use, be it from a specific cloud provider or some other company, and then build an architecture based on that.”

This shows that the mainstream adoption of serverless has also encouraged a modular approach to innovation. Businesses now mix and match serverless services from cloud and independent vendors, tailoring architectures to meet their specific needs. This reflects a flexible ecosystem rather than a rigid framework.

Best Practices for Serverless Success

The industry leaders shared these key recommendations:

1. Design for failure and implement robust error handling
2. Keep functions focused and small to optimize performance
3. Implement proper security controls and follow the principle of least privilege
4. Use infrastructure as code to manage serverless resources
5. Consider cold starts and optimize function initialization

An Ecosystem Designed For Engineers

Serverless represents the shift of how abstracting the infrastructure frees developers to focus entirely on building impactful solutions in a risk-averse environment. The freedom fosters creativity, accelerates ideation to market cycles, and delivers tangible business value.

As Shilpa explains, “Once engineers experience the freedom and power of serverless, they won’t want to give it up. Couple that with all these AI tools that are coming up….. It brings business value to the market - Why won’t people adopt it.”

Common Serverless Use cases

Organizations are successfully implementing serverless for:

• Real-time data processing and ETL pipelines
• Microservices and API backends
• Event-driven architecture implementations
• Image and media processing
• Automated DevOps tasks and CI/CD pipelines

The Backbone of Future Tech

With the tech evolution, we are moving towards a higher level of abstraction. Developers use powerful frameworks and platforms to work faster instead of writing low-level code to deploy applications.

Serverless plays a key role in this evolution by providing an invisible foundation. As Eric Johnson highlights, “Applications and services will move higher up the stack, but underneath, they’ll be powered by serverless. Even when generative AI creates something, it will turn to serverless services because it just makes sense.”

Key Takeaways

Serverless isn’t a buzzword as it was five years ago. It has become a cornerstone, a quiet ubiquity, of modern technology where the future isn’t about dramatic reinvention but natural evolution.

While serverless has become foundational, organizations can take these concrete steps:

1. Assess your current architecture for serverless opportunities
2. Invest in developer training for serverless technologies
3. Start small with pilot projects to gain experience
4. Build a serverless center of excellence to share best practices
5. Stay updated with serverless ecosystem developments through communities and events

To summarize, serverless will fortify the next wave of technological breakthroughs, from AI to microservices and managed ecosystems.

Beyond this conversation

If you choose to learn more about serverless and equip your game, we would recommend you to add these tasks to your learning goals.

Resources for further learning

• Join serverless communities on Discord and Slack
• Attend ServerlessDays events (serverlessdays.io)
• Follow industry experts mentioned in this article
• Explore cloud providers’ serverless documentation and tutorials
• Participate in hands-on workshops and certification programs