Top Serverless Platforms in 2023

Serverless is a cloud-naive way of building and running applications on the cloud without the need to manage servers. This model allows developers to focus on the logic and functionality of the applications while the cloud provider manages the provisioning, maintenance and scaling of server infrastructure.

Once deployed, the serverless apps automatically scale up or down as per demand. These serverless offerings are metered using an event-driven execution model and companies can increase or decrease the computing power as per need and billing as per use. Server performance is the responsibility of the serverless platform provider and choosing the right vendor is essential.

In this article, we will explore some of the more popular serverless cloud computing platforms, compare their pros and cons, and discuss their use cases to help you evaluate the choices for selecting the services that match your needs.

Most Popular Serverless Platforms In 2023

AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda was introduced in 2014 and is one of the most well-known serverless platform providers. It’s a robust platform and integration with other AWS offerings, making it a go-to choice for those already within Amazon’s ecosystem. It focuses mainly on providing a platform for event-driven workflows and emphasizes compatibility and integration with other AWS services because of its extensive catalog.

It supports native language runtimes, including Node.js, Python, Ruby, Java, Go, .Net Core.

AWS Lambda is considered one of the most mature platforms available today and Its stability, features and general familiarity make it the service that other platforms are compared against. It has a proven track record of reliability and can handle workloads of varying capacity. It offers flexible pricing that depends entirely on the app’s actual performance and not on the subscription duration.

Pros:

1. Arbitrary executables: AWS Lambda can be configured to run arbitrary executables to process events.
2. Custom runtimes: Users are not restricted to using runtimes provided natively by Amazon and can run their language runtimes.
3. Provisioned concurrency: This feature allows users to specify the number of pre-initialized execution environments for serverless functions. These execution environments can respond immediately to incoming function requests without cold start latency.
4. Easy access to persistence: Amazon’s RDS Proxy can securely connect to database instances from their functions and use its Elastic File System to store file-based data.

Cons

1. Function memory: Is configurable in 1 MB increments, from 128 MB to 10240 MB.
2. Function timeout: The timeout is 15 minutes or 900 seconds.
3. Function layers: Offers only 5 layers.
4. Deployment: Deployment size is 50 MB zipped and 250 MB unzipped.
5. Request and response time: It offers 6 MB for synchronous and 256 KB for asynchronous.

Use cases

1. Asana — It supports Lambda-based triggers and allows developers to connect Lambda code to its task managers and organize processes in a better way.
2. CircleCl — AWS Lambda can be integrated with CircleCI, a continuous development tool that allows developers to deploy code on Lambda as soon as it is written.

Microsoft Azure Functions

Microsoft Azure Functions was introduced in 2016. It is a general-purpose serverless platform and runs event-driven applications. It offers an excellent option for developers using Windows-focused development technologies or Azure-based services. It leans towards DevOps and its tools are focused on enabling continuous testing, deployment and integration.

It follows the industry pattern for pricing and charges for used memory rather than allocated memory and for resources used when executing multiple functions.

It supports C#, JavaScript, F#, Java, PowerShell, Python, TypeScript and other additional languages and runtimes using a lightweight web server as a custom handler.

Pros

1. Deployment options: Azure offers multiple plans that bundle features as needed for executing serverless functions.
2. Extensions: Azure allows adding extensions that support various workflows and integrations.
3. Integrated HTTP: Azure functions are available with HTTP management.

Cons

1. Function execution time: It offers 10 minutes on its consumption plan and unlimited time on its premium and dedicated plans.
2. Request size: The maximum request size offered is 100 MB.
3. Memory: Azure offers 1.5 GB on the consumption plans, 3.5–14 GB on premium and 1.75–14 GB on its dedicated plans,

Use cases

1. Asos — Asos wanted to improve its personalization of services. They migrated to Microsoft Azure in 2016, which helped Asos to respond quickly and execute new features in a short period.
2. HP — HP started using Azure to power its customer support by developing a conversational agent with it and AI serverless tools.

Google Cloud Functions

Google Cloud Functions, a general serverless solution, was released in 2016. It follows the general model and offers a high-performance, stable platform for deployment functionality without management. The platform integrates with other Google services catalogs to complement users already using the Google ecosystem. It is not heavily specialized and provides a reliable target and platform for deploying serverless functions on Google Cloud.

It supports native language runtimes, including Node.js, Python, Go, Java, .Net Core, Ruby and PHP.

Pros

1. Distributed tracing: Distributed tracing and debugging are designed to work well with Google’s Cloud Trace and Cloud Debugger tools.
2. Integrated HTTP: Google Cloud Functions are available with HTTP management.

Cons

1. Functions: Number of functions allowed per region are 1000.
2. Deployment size: 100 MB compressed and 500 MB uncompressed for source plus modules.
3. HTTP request size: 10 MB
4. HTTP response size:10 MB
5. Function timeout: 540 seconds

Use cases

1. Lucille Games used Google Cloud Functions, Cloud Spanner and Compute Engine to develop and deploy original games. This enabled them to minimize gaming delays and decrease server costs.
2. Smart Parking — Smart Parking is an innovative IoT based parking startup which built its product from ground up on the cloud using Google Cloud Functions.

IBM Bluemix OpenWhisk

IBM Bluemix OpenWhisk is a serverless platform that works with triggers, rules and events. The conditions for execution of each feature is described with rules and serverless framework template and executed with components. It features many flexible components for web projects.

It supports Java, JavaScript, Swift, Go, PHP, Python and Ruby, including other languages like COBOL using buildpacks.

Pros

1. Flexibility — It allows changing one component at a time and monitoring its performance without the risk of affecting the platform’s settings.
2. Control using the command line — Users can use the command line to manage app perfrance.
3. Web IDE — This is a personalized platform and users can write code, track bugs, track activity and report issues.

Cons

1. Complicated interface: Its GUI interface is not intuitive and managing an app using the command line requires software development skills and expertise.
2. Product bugs: It’s a relatively new platform with unstable functionality. The maximum execution time is 5 minutes only, and the maximum code size is 48 MB, while the number of triggers per minute is 5000.

Use cases

1. American Airlines — American Airlines migrated to IBM Bluemix serverless platform to improve client-facing application performance. They needed a secure deployment environment to transition to microservice architecture.
2. Ubank — They used IBM Bluemix to operate in IBM’s other cloud offerings and this helped them release new products faster to the market.

Conclusion

Serverless cloud computing allows developers to focus on the business logic of their applications rather than the infrastructure, availability of resources, or scalability. Serverless platforms provide a wide range of services and features, enabling reliable, fast, and cost-effective development and deployment of serverless applications. The serverless market is expected to grow significantly and tying up with experienced software services can allow businesses to leverage the benefits of cloud computing.