Serverless Applications: Why, When, and How?

Why do so many companies adopt serverless? When are serverless applications well suited? How are they currently implemented? To address these questions, we analyze 89 serverless applications from open source projects, industrial sources, academic literature, and scientific computing-presenting the m...

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Published inIEEE software Vol. 38; no. 1; pp. 32 - 39
Main Authors Eismann, Simon, Scheuner, Joel, van Eyk, Erwin, Schwinger, Maximilian, Grohmann, Johannes, Herbst, Nikolas, Abad, Cristina L., Iosup, Alexandru
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Alamitos IEEE 01.01.2021
IEEE Computer Society
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Abstract Why do so many companies adopt serverless? When are serverless applications well suited? How are they currently implemented? To address these questions, we analyze 89 serverless applications from open source projects, industrial sources, academic literature, and scientific computing-presenting the most extensive study to date.
AbstractList Why do so many companies adopt serverless? When are serverless applications well suited? How are they currently implemented? To address these questions, we analyze 89 serverless applications from open source projects, industrial sources, academic literature, and scientific computing-presenting the most extensive study to date.
Serverless computing shows good promise for efficiency and ease-of-use. Yet, there are only a few, scattered and sometimes conflicting reports on questions such as Why do so many companies adopt serverless?, When are serverless applications well suited?, and How are serverless applications currently implemented? To address these questions, we analyze 89 serverless applications from open-source projects, industrial sources, academic literature, and scientific computing—the most extensive study to date.
Serverless computing shows good promise for efficiency and ease-of-use. Yet, there are only a few, scattered and sometimes conflicting reports on questions such as Why do so many companies adopt serverless?, When are serverless applications well suited?, and How are serverless applications currently implemented? To address these questions, we analyze 89 serverless applications from open-source projects, industrial sources, academic literature, and scientific computing—the most extensive study to date. IEEE
Author Eismann, Simon
Abad, Cristina L.
Schwinger, Maximilian
Iosup, Alexandru
Scheuner, Joel
Herbst, Nikolas
van Eyk, Erwin
Grohmann, Johannes
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Snippet Why do so many companies adopt serverless? When are serverless applications well suited? How are they currently implemented? To address these questions, we...
Serverless computing shows good promise for efficiency and ease-of-use. Yet, there are only a few, scattered and sometimes conflicting reports on questions...
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SubjectTerms Academic literature
Computer applications
Computer software
Ease-of-use
Industrial sources
Logic gates
Open source projects
Open systems
Programvaruteknik
Resource management
Scalability
Servers
Social network services
Software Engineering
Task analysis
Title Serverless Applications: Why, When, and How?
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