Serverless Computing

Serverless computing is a cloud operating model. You deploy code or configure a managed service. The provider provisions resources, scales capacity, and maintains the underlying servers.

Servers still exist. They are outside your normal unit of management. You work with functions, containers, databases, queues, event routers, and workflows through service interfaces.

This shift changes your responsibilities. You stop choosing machine counts for each request spike. You still own application logic, data, access, configuration, reliability, observability, and cost.

Serverless is broader than functions

Function as a service, or FaaS, runs code in response to an invocation. The code enters through a handler, performs bounded work, and returns or emits a result.

Serverless also includes managed capabilities that require no customer-managed hosts. A database can scale with requests. A queue can retain work. An event router can match events to consumers. A workflow service can preserve coordination state.

FaaS is therefore one serverless compute pattern, not a synonym for every serverless service.

Follow the event

Many serverless applications are event driven. An event records something that happened. An HTTP request arrived. A file was uploaded. A message entered a queue. A timer fired. A database record changed.

A useful path has six parts: