Cloud Native - server less

The ultimate goal to become truly cloud mature, is to be what is termed “Cloud Native”. That’s where the application is architected and execution of workflow is designed, to leverage “micro services” – architectural design of application as a collection of loosely coupled services. Then once the software build is operating in this way, each process ( or execution step ) can be built in terms of Lambda functions ( this is an AWS offering ). Where each lambda function is its own self-contained module of code, that carries out a specific task on the provided inputs, generating a result and or output. These results or outputs can then “spawn” further lambda functions. What is then achieved is that the original business transaction, is the executed by means of one or more lambda functions.

Now the beauty is when it’s understood where these “lambda functions” are executed. The business does not need to stand up compute instance infrastructure to execute these lambda functions, instead, AWS provide, and manage, and ensure always works, that infrastructure. Further still, “the consumption charge” is based upon the runtime of that lambda function, where the cost is based on a very small rate per minute, and where the lambda runtime is measured by the second.

So not only is this a very cheap compute option, it is truly a charge only when used, run it only when needed mechanism, but more than that, there is no infrastructure to manage ( that’s run, operate, backup, operating system patch, recover and restore – nothing).