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Serverless computing is a cloud service where computing resources are provided on demand to run applications.
A third-party cloud service provider is responsible for handling and maintaining the physical infrastructure and servers to support applications.
Software developers using serverless computing can develop and execute code remotely, without having to worry about the server environment.
See below to learn all about the global serverless computing market:
Serverless computing market
The serverless computing market had an estimated value of $7.29 billion in 2020. Projected to maintain a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.71% for the forecast period 2021 to 2028, it’s expected to reach a value of $36.84 billion by 2028.
Several geographic regions are driving growth in the serverless computing market:
- The U.S. market was estimated at $1.6 billion in 2021, making up 36% of the market
- China had the second-largest share at 16% and is expected to reach $4.5 billion by 2027, with a CAGR of 25%
- Japan and Canada are projected to grow by 23.5% and 21.7% over the forecast period from 2020 to 2027
- The European market made up 16% of the market and is expected to maintain a CAGR of 6.79%, reaching $20.92 billion by 2027
- Germany has one of the fastest projected CAGR in Europe at 17.8%
- Australia, India, and South Korea are expected to drive the Asia-Pacific market
Demand in the serverless computing market is primarily driven by end users in several industries:
- IT and telecommunications
- Banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI)
- Retail and consumer goods
- Manufacturing
- Health care
- Media and entertainment
“With the adoption of serverless architecture, organizations can annihilate expensive traditional and time-consuming processes, such as purchasing new hardware components, installing, configuring, and troubleshooting,” says Verified Market Research in a brief on its 2022 report on the serverless architecture market.
“Serverless computing has appeared as a critical component for deploying cloud services and applications in such a landscape. The traditional cloud infrastructure-as-a-service model for designing functionality that produces credit score checks for mobile users as a mobile banking application could take days or weeks to build, test, and provide the functionality.”
Serverless computing features
Serverless computing provides a ready-to-use platform for developers without the burden of back-end cloud infrastructure management.
It’s a collection of tech components and attributes that work together to create a serverless experience.
Functionality-as-a-service
Functionality-as-a-service (FaaS) is the foundation of serverless computing architectures. It’s the platform that developers access to develop, run, and manage their applications.
Database and storage
The data layer of serverless architecture consists of SQL and NoSQL databases and object storage. The serverless aspect removes the limited capacity and query limits, allowing for linear scaling of the infrastructure and on-demand cost.
Event streaming and messaging
Serverless computing is event-driven, making it suitable for processing streams of workloads with various event streaming platforms.
APIs
APIs simplify and streamline the connection between the serverless computing end user and provider. They keep response logs, manage data sharing and viewing policies, and provide HTTP routing.
As a solution, serverless computing architectures can be used for a wide variety of use cases in an enterprise setting.
Deploying web and mobile apps
App development and deployment are one of serverless computing’s most popular uses. They are usually easier to build and manage, as serverless computing is adaptable to fluctuating workloads.
Internet of Things
Internet of Things (IoT) network devices are an example of serverless users. IoT in home automation and custom enterprise solutions don’t require high-capacity devices, as long as they’re connected to the remote server.
Data processing
Being an event-based architecture, serverless computing is ideal for data processing. Custom functions can be assigned to certain data stream events and occurrences, automatically handling the influx of data on demand.
Cloud automation
Serverless computing can be used to automate cloud tasks that don’t require 24/7 server access. Examples of this include database backups and regular configuration changes.
Benefits of serverless computing
The benefits of serverless computing are similar to those offered by the cloud. Outsourcing the management and maintenance of servers and infrastructure can have numerous benefits for businesses.
A few common serverless computing benefits include:
- Cost-effective with per-use pricing models
- Eliminates the need for infrastructure management
- Near instantaneous scaling
- Reliability
- Quick deployment of updates and configuration
- Decreased latency with code running close to its application
“When getting started with serverless, there is no need for a complete infrastructure overhaul. You can implement serverless at an API route-by-route level while maintaining your current infrastructure, as long as you host on AWS, GCP, or Azure,” says Kris Jones, a member of the Forbes Technology Council.
“This will help you see the immediate benefits of serverless by reducing cost or increasing scalability, two of the main advantages of serverless.”
Serverless computing use cases
Serverless computing solutions are used by companies looking to minimize the time, energy, and cost they spend on computing power and servers.
DingDingNow
DingDingNow is a startup that was founded in early 2020, during the early pandemic. It sought to fill the gap of networking and in-person meetings for employees and independent contractors forced to work remotely.
The company needed to meet demand as soon as possible and was unable to create an interactive, market-ready platform from scratch in time. By working with Sufle, DingDingNow launched through Amazon Chime SDK, going serverless from day one.
DingDingNow benefited from Sufle’s enthusiasm for new services, using AWS as its serverless video meeting infrastructure. The solutions were both cost-efficient and scalable.
“The original problem we were having was we wanted DingDingNow to be completely cloud-native and deployed with robust security and best practices on the cloud,” says Sunil Anand, co-founder and COO, DingDingNow.
“Sufle was the best trusted advisor to make this happen. Sufle was able to architect AWS Lambda for us in a serverless capacity and also deploy the AWS configuration and architect the solution in such a way that our overall cloud spending decreased significantly.”
DingDingNow was able to go from zero to several hundred users in a matter of weeks from launch, hosting dozens of live chats in a short period of time.
Power Ledger
Power Ledger is a company in the energy industry that uses its own blockchain-enabled energy trading platform to make efficient energy markets. With its software in use in Australia, India, Japan, Thailand, and the U.S., Power Ledger’s technology has been globally recognized.
As Power Ledger’s model caught the attention of governments, individuals, and businesses, the company knew it couldn’t sustain its rate of growth without change.
Power Ledger found that it was impractical to run its software on numerous physical infrastructures in all locations it serves. Every new client meant additional server and storage space to manage and maintain in house.
Power Ledger used Kubernetes open-source system for automation, deployment, and management of its platform. It also used Google Cloud to host its software and provide remote access to its clients around the globe.
“We had easy access to the online resources we needed for the project, which is a good indication of the developer support that is out there for Google Cloud,” says John Bulich, co-founder and technical director, Power Ledger.
“Ease of use and lack of complexity of the product also made our experience in undertaking the migration extremely positive.”
Power Ledger was able to reduce its cloud costs by 30% with Google Cloud and decrease its infrastructure management time to around five hours per deployment team.
SiteSpirit
SiteSpirit is a software consulting company that develops back-office systems and websites for various industries. Its solutions are accompanied by its web hosting and content management tool, PageSpirit.
One of its offerings was a library of media that clients can use in their marketing campaigns. However, SiteSpirit wanted to reduce the time clients spent finding and editing media for their websites.
Using IBM Cloudant, SiteSpirit was able to create MediaSpirit, a cloud-based media-as-a-library offering. By going serverless with its media library, SiteSpirit didn’t have to store, tag, retrieve, and manipulate thousands of images for every client.
“Cloudant is amazingly quick at full-text searches, and OpenWhisk keeps the performance consistently fast, regardless of the number of users,” says Barry Nijenhuis, co-founder, SiteSpirit.
“We’re seeing sub-second response times, even when the system is under heavy load.”
With IBM Cloudant, SiteSpirit was able to reduce costs by 90%, make image searching 10 times faster for clients, and store their media in a user-friendly online archive.
Serverless computing providers
Some of the leading players in the serverless computing market include:
- AWS
- Microsoft
- IBM
- Alibaba Cloud
- Google Cloud
- CloudFlare
- KNative
- Parse
- Oracle
- StackPath
