The term "Serverless" is overloaded in the technology world and it is becoming harder to know exactly what is and is not serverless. What makes the term even harder is the way Cloud providers change how they use the term so we end up with no clear indication as to what truly is and is not "Serverless". To help clear this up, we went over to ChatGPT and asked them.
What ChatGPT Says
What does "Serverless" really mean?
The term "Serverless" in the world of tech refers to a cloud computing model where a third-party provider manages the infrastructure and automatically allocates computing resources such as servers, storage, and databases, based on the application's needs. The name "Serverless" comes from the idea that developers do not need to worry about the underlying servers on which their code runs.
In a serverless architecture, the cloud provider dynamically provisions resources as needed, and developers only pay for the actual usage of these resources, typically in small increments of time. This model enables developers to focus on writing code and building applications, without the need to manage the underlying infrastructure, which can be time-consuming and expensive.
Serverless architectures are typically event-driven, where the code is triggered by specific events or requests, such as user requests or file uploads. This allows for highly scalable and efficient applications that can easily handle varying levels of demand.
Overall, the serverless model enables faster development, lower costs, and greater scalability for applications, making it an increasingly popular choice for many businesses and developers.
What We Think
We think Serverless should "Scale to Zero" and be paid for via a Pay-per-use model. A truly serverless solution will hide all infrastructure decisions and consumers are not required to think about how the service runs, it just does and is. If there is no traffic, there is no cost is the fundamental core of what Serverless truly means to us and is how we think of the term "Serverless".
There has been a lot of community discussion around what is Serverless, here are some additional links to help round out what it is and isn't, don't just take our word for it.