What is The Serverless Edge?
Tags: serverless, devops, aws, leadership
Published: 2021-11-10 11:10:16

Serverless computing has become a term for how we build software. It is more than the compute; it is a mindset. A DataDog survey in 2020 stated that 50% of AWS users had serverless components, and container users are flocking to Lambda – one of the AWS Serverless Services. 

Many experts and leaders are still not convinced that Serverless will lead to the Future of Work and Emerging Technology. People don’t make the connection. What part does it play in the Future of Work and the 4th Industrial Revolution? We will explore this to help you learn in our blog content and case studies.

We believe serverless is a gateway into many new ways of working – a technology-led, low friction, and high-value future. 

Why serverless?
It represents the cutting edge of how we build business and web applications. Every business needs software, it needs it fast, and it must be cheap. Imagine if you could combine that with the ability to create a fast feedback flow and have an unlimited selection of tech to use? This is what Serverless means for business leaders. Unfortunately, the serverless term is quite technical and low-level. 

We want to change that. We want to support the leading edge of software development to create business capability and performance. No immense complexity security problems or large data centers. Just give it to me straight, quickly and don’t make me spend loads of money on code.

Many think of Serverless as a new method of compute, which is incorrect. It is not comparable to containers. The first Serverless service in AWS was S3 – the Simple Storage Service. The definition of Serverless gets quite opinionated, so it’s explored further in this article by Ben Kehoe.

How is it linked to the Future of work?
Software is eating the World – a famous quote from Andersson in 2011. Digital is not just a channel; it’s a new mindset and will continue to redefine our workplaces into the ’20s and the ’30s. Unthinkable new business capability can be co-created with the Serverless mindset. This leads to different ways of working, collaboration patterns, the ability to reimagine work and reinvent how we deliver value to our customers. There are new business models that are generating millions of dollars, and textbooks cannot keep up.

Scale down to scale up
Technical Change for this future has already happened. Organizational change is still behind – people move slower than technology. This is fact and not criticism. The days of having 300 people in a massive programme of work are fading out. It’s wasteful (many people are in coordination roles) and slow. Imagine you could shrink down to a single, cross-functional team that included everyone required to create the vision, discover, decide, build and deliver? Serverless gives you the ability to develop software with minimal hand-offs, so you can scale down to scale up.

Technology of tomorrow
We are living in fascinating times. Artificial Intelligence has never been more accessible and powerful. We can achieve results now that we didn’t dream of a year ago. IoT and the sensor revolution expands weekly, touching every industry. Connectivity and networks invent every few years as standards evolve. Interfaces with computers created in the 1960s are finally starting to see a revolution. It has taken us around 50 years to get voice to a state that it feels natural. Quantum compute, capable of incredible speeds, is supposedly around the corner. What does this mind-boggling list have in common? Only ten years ago, if you wanted to bring in one of these capabilities into your business, the first step was to request and write a substantial cheque and wait several months. Today a student at college can integrate any of these technologies with her Serverless application in minutes, and the cost is minimal. 

Yes, you can use serverless to build a webpage and process payments for your business. You can also think of software as a series of events and start introducing exciting new technology into your business. An IoT use case? Need to process lots of data? Need a Voice Assistant? Need to connect many disparate systems? Serverless can make all of this a lot easier.

The Serverless Edge
The Serverless Edge title implies that we will keep on the leading edge of business. We will:

 - focus on business
 - explain how the latest technology is evolving and join the 
   dots for you
 - make predictions about the Future of Work and how new 
   technology will change the game, and
 - comment on the ever-complex challenges of running efficient 
   engineering functions.

Serverless brings all this together as it’s a mindset, a serverless edge mindset that encourages Simplicity, Speed, Innovation, Value and the Customer. We understand the details, but we are not going to focus on Functions, Cloud Configurations or Containers – these are critical, but other sites are more comprehensive. We will retain a Serverless mindset and focus on Business Value.

The Serverless Edge will stay ahead and give you insights into the Serverless Mindset, the Future of Work for business and engineers and the impact of new technology. We will look at all of this through the lens of business value and (hopefully) use plain English.