In the same way that the rise of cloud computing enabled hundreds of successful startups to be built upon the major providers’ architectures to enable ease of usage and enhanced functionality, we’re seeing startups built on top of serverless platforms like AWS Lambda Functions, Microsoft Azure Functions, and Google Cloud Functions. The Unusual Ventures Team believes there are numerous areas of opportunity in the space and that we are only in the early innings of the serverless movement. 

If you’ve ever been frustrated with server management and provisioning, then serverless may be for you. In recent years, serverless computing—or the management of servers and resources by the cloud providers—has emerged as the fastest-growing service among public cloud services, with a 50% growth in adoption and 36% of companies currently using the technology, according to RightScale’s 2019 State of the Cloud Report. The report also states an additional 39% are experimenting with serverless or plan to use it, behind only machine learning (48%) and IoT (41%).

In the Serverless Community Survey taken in 2017, 45% of respondents said they were using serverless at work in some capacity. In 2018, 82% of the same respondents answered that they used it at work (nearly double!), and over half said that serverless was critical for the work they did at their job.

Proponents of serverless tout it as the next wave of cloud computing and microservice based architectures, and all major cloud providers are investing significant resources toward its development. Companies across industries like Netflix, AutoDesk, Nordstrom, and Thomson Reuters have adopted serverless as major parts of their architecture, and have experienced both significant cost reductions and ease of development and maintenance. However, significant difficulties still exist in leveraging serverless today.

In this white paper, we will explain:

• What serverless means in greater detail
• Why it is an exciting (yet relatively early) space to keep an eye on
• The barriers preventing it from mass adoption today
• Examples of different types of companies that are paving the way for future consumption
  
  

Serverless computing could become the de-facto programming model in the next stage of the cloud era, and the Unusual Team is excited to see what technologies emerge to better enable developers to leverage serverless within their organizations. In that vein, we’d love to hear from you if you are working on new serverless technologies!

To learn more about Unusual Ventures and technologies we’re excited about, follow us on Twitter