Function as a service (FaaS) is a category of
cloud computing services that provides a
platform
Platform may refer to:
Technology
* Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run
* Platform game, a genre of video games
* Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models
* Weapons platform, a system ...
allowing customers to develop, run, and manage application functionalities without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure typically associated with developing and launching an app. Building an application following this model is one way of achieving a "
serverless" architecture, and is typically used when building
microservices
A microservice architecture – a variant of the service-oriented architecture structural style – is an architectural pattern that arranges an application as a collection of loosely-coupled, fine-grained services, communicating through ligh ...
applications.
FaaS was initially offered by various start-ups circa 2010, such as PiCloud.
AWS Lambda was the first FaaS offering by a large public cloud vendor, followed b
Google Cloud Functions Microsoft Azure Functions,
IBM/
Apache's
OpenWhisk (
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
) in 2016 and
Oracle Cloud
Oracle Cloud is a cloud computing service offered by Oracle Corporation providing servers, storage, network, applications and services through a global network of Oracle Corporation managed data centers. The company allows t ...
Fn (open source) in 2017.
Use cases
Use cases for FaaS are associated with "on-demand" functionality that enables the supporting infrastructure to be powered down and not incur charges when not in use. Examples include data processing (e.g.,
batch processing
Computerized batch processing is a method of running software programs called jobs in batches automatically. While users are required to submit the jobs, no other interaction by the user is required to process the batch. Batches may automatically ...
,
stream processing
In computer science, stream processing (also known as event stream processing, data stream processing, or distributed stream processing) is a programming paradigm which views data streams, or sequences of events in time, as the central input and o ...
,
extract-transform-load (ETL)),
Internet of things
The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other com ...
(IoT) services for
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...
-connected devices,
mobile app
A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on ...
lications, and
web application
A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection.
History
In earlier computing models like client-serve ...
s.
Another real-world use case can be creating
APIs for already built applications without breaking down or modifying the current or existing functionality of the application.
Comparison with PaaS application hosting services
Platform as a service (PaaS) application hosting services is similar to FaaS in that they also hide "servers" from developers. However, such hosting services typically always have at least one server process running that receives external requests. Scaling is achieved by booting up more server processes, which the developer is typically charged directly for. Consequently, scalability remains visible to the developer.
By contrast, FaaS does not require any server process constantly being run. While an initial request may take longer to be handled than an application hosting platform (up to several seconds
), caching may enable subsequent requests to be handled within milliseconds. As developers only pay for function execution time (and no process idle time), lower costs at higher scalability can be achieved (at the cost of latency).
See also
*
Serverless computing
Serverless computing is a cloud computing execution model in which the cloud provider allocates machine resources on demand, taking care of the servers on behalf of their customers. "Serverless" is a misnomer in the sense that servers are still ...
*
Serverless Framework
The Serverless Framework is a free and open-source web framework written using Node.js. Serverless is the first framework developed for building applications on AWS Lambda, a serverless computing platform provided by Amazon as a part of Amazon We ...
*
AWS Lambda
References
{{Cloud computing
Serverless computing
As a service