Serverless-first
When an organization gets ready to adopt serverless, it has already decided on a cloud-first strategy utilizing the public cloud (e.g., AWS) to host, develop, and operate its business applications, over on-premises and self-managed legacy systems. Serverless-first is a way of thinking that views serverless as the best-fit technologychoice to build and operate business applications to deliver value faster.
While discussing how organizations can transform with a clear purpose and increase velocity with modern technologies, in the book The Value Flywheel Effect: Power the Future and Accelerate Your Organization to the Modern Cloud (IT Revolution Press),David Anderson sums it up nicely:
It’s about doing the simplest thing to deliver value by removing the unnecessary bag‐ gage. Today serverless-first is the perfect strategy to achieve this; it’s a quiet revolution happening right in front of us. A serverless-first mindset enables teams to focus on business outcomes and business impact, not keeping the lights on.
It’s about driving value for your business in this modern, fast-paced, and highly competitive world. Organizations are constantly iterating and finding ways to reach customers and bring value to the business quicker than before. As an engineer, architect, or CTO, you are part of the fast-spinning value flywheel. Hence, you must learn to leave the heavy engineering to the managed cloud service providers, such as AWS, and evolve your business solutions on top with a pragmatic and practical mind‐ set. Serverless-first as a principle and strategy becomes part of that value-generation process.
Though not an exhaustive list,1 adopting the principles described in the previous sections will help you broaden your serverless mindset with the essentials crucial for your journey. Building your serverless technology ecosystem without a strong business foundation, team alignment, and clearly defined purpose will eventually lead to ambiguity and unsustainable applications that hamper progress.
Not all enterprises start serverless adoption with exclusively green-field product development. Many have a mix of legacy systems, newer applications, and upcoming future requirements. So, how do you make sure serverless is the best-fit technology choice? The following section takes you through an evaluation process to understand its suitability in your business domain.
