Every couple of days you read about the "next big thing in [enter technology name here]" and it's hard to tell if there's anything behind those claims. Yet, I often suffer from a terrible affliction called FOMO --- fear of missing out --- which makes me spend hours upon hours testing the technology only to find it completely useless and nothing to show for my efforts.
So how can you tell that that new thing you just found out about will stick around for a while? Well, I found that if a technology gets picked up by a big company that usually means it's here to stay. Using the same logic I've put serverless to the test. Here are a few companies that use serverless right now.
1. Netflix
2. Codepen
Codepen has been around since 2012 and has quickly become a standard for web developers. People use it to share pieces of code and examples that help newcomers get a jump start in their development career. Right now Codepen servers up to 200 000 requests per hour and while that is impressive, what surprised me is the fact that all their infrastructure is run by a one-man DevOps team. What better way to learn about the wonders of serverless than from the horse's mouth, to that end, here's a podcast made by the guys over at codepen.io talking about serverless.
3. Zalora
Zalora is one of the biggest fashion stores in Asia employing around 1500 people with a user base of over 20 million users. They have a cool mission statement: "fashion on-demand, 24/7 at your doorstep". They rely heavily on AWS and Lambda to make sure every customer gets access to the website and apps without worrying about scaling issues. I like to quote their CTO whenever I have the chance as it points out something that most companies will come to realize in the not-so-distant future.
"We outgrew what the server world offered to us and it was the right time for us to switch over to a provider like AWS" --- Karthik Subramanian --- CTO at Zalora
4. Coca-Cola
5. Nordstrom
Nordstrom is an American-based chain of department stores, headquartered in Seattle. The company was founded over a hundred years ago and has been on the innovation side of technologies ever since. They started switching from data-driven applications to event-driven applications and have been really pushing the envelope with the creation of an open-source proof-of-concept Serverless architecture retail store called Hello Retail. Rob Gruhl talks to This is My Architecture, an AWS community show about how they are using AWS Lambda to create an event-driven app.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7PTtm_3Os4
These are just a few of the companies that have already switched server technologies, from traditional servers to serverless infrastructure. Of course, this is by no means a reason to think traditional servers will disappear but having big companies make the jump does point to a not-so-distant future where serverless will be the go-to technology for deploying enterprise applications. We, the folks at Dashbird, are proud to stand next to business giants in our belief that the future is serverless.