Serverless computing is a revolutionary approach to application development that enables developers to build and run applications without having to manage any underlying infrastructure. This article provides an in-depth look at serverless computing on Microsoft Azure, covering the key concepts, benefits, and patterns of serverless applications.

What is Serverless Computing? Serverless computing allows developers to build and run applications and services without having to provision or manage any servers. The cloud service provider (in this case, Microsoft Azure) automatically provisions, scales, and manages the infrastructure required to run the code. This abstraction of the infrastructure layer allows developers to focus solely on the business logic of their applications, rather than worrying about the underlying resources.

It’s important to note that servers are still running the code in a serverless architecture. The ‘serverless’ term refers to the fact that the tasks associated with infrastructure provisioning and management are invisible to the developer.

Top Benefits of Serverless Computing Serverless computing offers several key benefits that make it an attractive choice for modern application development:

  1. No Infrastructure Management: With serverless, developers can avoid the administrative tasks of provisioning, scaling, and managing infrastructure. They simply deploy their code, and the cloud provider handles the rest.

  2. Dynamic Scalability: Serverless platforms automatically scale up and down within seconds to match the demands of any workload, ensuring optimal performance and cost-efficiency.

  3. Faster Time to Market: Serverless applications reduce the operational dependencies on each development cycle, enabling development teams to deliver new functionality more quickly.

  4. More Efficient Resource Utilization: By shifting to serverless technologies, organizations can reduce their total cost of ownership (TCO) and reallocate resources to accelerate innovation.

Serverless Application Patterns Developers can build serverless applications using a variety of patterns, many of which align with existing approaches:

  1. Serverless Functions: Serverless functions use an event-driven model, with triggers that automatically execute code in response to events. They offer a pay-per-execution model with sub-second billing.

  2. Serverless Kubernetes: Serverless Kubernetes allows developers to bring their own containers to fully managed, Kubernetes-orchestrated clusters that can automatically scale up and down.

  3. Serverless Workflows: Serverless workflows take a low-code/no-code approach to simplify the orchestration of combined tasks, enabling developers to integrate different services without coding the interactions.

  4. Serverless Application Environments: In a serverless application environment, both the back end and front end are hosted on fully managed services that handle scaling, security, and compliance requirements.

  5. Serverless API Gateway: A serverless API gateway serves as a centralized, fully managed entry point for serverless backend services, allowing developers to publish, manage, secure, and analyze APIs at global scale.

End-to-End Serverless Platforms To maximize the benefits of serverless computing, organizations should consider using an end-to-end serverless platform that provides a comprehensive set of serverless technologies. This approach minimizes the time and resources invested in infrastructure management, as every component of the application (from computing and the database engine to messaging, analytics, and AI) can benefit from the serverless approach.

Microsoft Azure offers a robust and integrated end-to-end serverless platform, enabling developers to build and run serverless applications with ease. To get started with serverless computing on Azure, visit the Azure Serverless documentation and explore the various serverless services and patterns available.