Episode 18: Sitting on the curb clapping as serverless superheroes go by

What’s serverless? Are you serverless now? Is going from enterprise to serverless a natural evolution? Or, is it a “that was fun, now let’s go ride our bikes” moment? Is serverless “just a toy?” Is it a wide and varied ecosystem, or is it Lambda plus some other randos? What's up with serverless vs. containers?

Today, Forrest Brazeal is here to answer those questions and discuss pros and cons of serverless. He was a senior Cloud architect prior to joining Trek10. Forrest spent several years leading AWS and serverless engineering projects at Infor. He understands the challenges faced by enterprises moving to the Cloud and enjoys building solutions that provide maximum business value at a minimal cost. 

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• Bimodality: Backend development going away and being replaced by managed services; undifferentiated items are being moved to the Cloud
• Serverless is application designs with “Backend as a Service” (BaaS) and/or “Functions as a Service” (FaaS) platforms; everything is managed for you
• AWS Lambda: Is it today’s trend or a bias that everyone is using it; Lambda makes up 80% of current FaaS adoption
• Serverless Ecosystem: You can build it however you want, and you’re doing it right; but don’t take that at face-value; no two Lambda environments are alike
• Cloud services at this scale have not been knitted together to form applications that are serving major workloads; best practices need to be established
• Native Cloud providers will consolidate, and individual frameworks will be created with components of application stacks tied together to build systems
• Serverless vs. Containers: No need for disparity - we can learn to get along; people use containers because it is easier than going serverless
• Serverless Heroes series features people thinking out-of-the-box and helps identify emerging trends; serverless is growing, and it’s not just about startups
• Went from working with a Sharpie to Procreate for the FaaS and Furious cartoon series; serverless component of process is for invoicing    
• Changes? Packaging to handle sharing; more knobs on console; unified process needed because too many building own workflow and tooling
• Certification: Proof-positive that you know what you’re talking about or is it questionable value if not backing up expertise in the real world?

Links:

• Forrest Brazeal on Twitter
• Invoiceless
• Summon the vast power of certification - Dilbert cartoon
• Trek10 blog
• A Cloud Guru ThinkfaaS podcast
• A Cloud Guru - Serverless Superheros
• Why We’re Excited About AWS AppSync
• Serverless Architectures with Mike Roberts
• AWS Lambda
• AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM)
• Procreate
• AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
• Serverlessconf
• Digital Ocean