What are serverless computing's[1] most enthusiastic users getting out of the technology, and how are they getting there? They appreciate the ability to implement event-driven architecture, and to support their API deployments. However, they wish serverless had more portability, and would like to have greater local control of features and debugging tools.
These are some of the takeaways from the current Serverless Community Survey[2], coordinated by the tireless Jeremy Daly[3], hosted and posted on the GitHub site. In serverless computing, all back-end work such as scaling, capacity planning and maintenance operations is handled in an automated fashion, typically by a public cloud provider, so, in theory, all a developer has to worry about is writing or integrating code for the business problem. Of course, one can argue that the term "serverless" is off, since there is always a server somewhere doing something, but that's another discussion.
By its very nature, this survey is conducted among a self-selected group of serverless proponents, so its focus is on trends and preferences among those already well-ensconced within the serverless world. Accordingly, when asked about the maturity of their serverless efforts, 40% of the 582 respondents indicate their maturity level was "high," that they are "all in on serverless." Another 22% report their embrace is "medium," that they are "transitioning to serverless."
Amazon Web Services emerges as the far-and-away front-runner in this space, cited by 72% as their public cloud computing choice. Microsoft Azure follows at 18%, and Google Cloud Platform with 13%. Accordingly, 61% report employing AWS Lambda[4] for Function as a Service[5], or FaaS, which, along with managed services, form the core of serverless. Another nine percent use Azure Functions[6]