Serverless cloud architectures are design patterns that break down business logic into functional units according to some abstraction paradigm intent on freeing up server management. Three common paradigms are offered by leading cloud providers like Amazon and Google.
Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) — The Function-as-a-Service model can be put in place between Platform-as-a-Service and Software-as-a-Service. It’s not a bare bones development platform, and it's not a full-fledged software package.
In FaaS, developers have access to ready to implement frameworks of functionality. Application development centers on the idea that when requests are made, a container with the exact necessary function and resources is invoked, then when not needed, cleaned up. In this way, FaaS and Serverless are often used interchangeably, but Serverless refers to a third-party managed cloud environment with form-fitting provisioning, and FaaS refers to the event-driven architecture itself.
Mobile Backend-as-as-Service (mBaaS) — mBaaS, also just Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS), provides APIs for mobile developers to link to cloud services, such as cloud storage, user authentication, push notifications, etc. BaaS uses FaaS concepts, such as function-fitting containers to support a framework specific to cloud services.
Serverless Database — Databases can be abstracted using FaaS concepts, helping to eliminate the operational overhead of deploying and managing databases. They automatically scale database compute and storage resources based on real-time demand.