The traits of serverless architecture

Whenever new technologies emerge, the first priority for a technologist is to understand the implication of adopting it. Serverless architecture is a case in point. Unfortunately, much of the current literature around serverless architecture focuses solely on its benefits.

Many of the articles —and examples used — are driven by cloud providers —so, unsurprisingly talk up the positives. This write-up attempts to give a better understanding of the traits of serverless architecture. I’ve deliberately chosen the word trait, and not characteristic, because these are the elements of the serverless architecture that you can’t change.

Characteristics are malleable, traits are inherent. Traits are also neutral, hence it isn’t positive nor negative. In some cases, the type of trait I’ll describe may have positive connotations, but I’ll be keeping a neutral head on this one so that you understand what you’ll be facing.

Traits are also inherent, hence you’ll have to embrace them, not fight them because such attempts are likely to prove quite costly. Characteristics, on the other hand, need effort spent to mold them, and you can still get them wrong. This article doesn’t aim to help you understand all of the topics in-depth but to give you a general overview of what you are in for.

These are the traits of serverless architecture defined in this article:

Source: thoughtworks.com