Serverless Computing or Functions as a Service (FaaS) is gaining momentum. Amazon is fueling the innovation by expanding Lambda to edge devices and content distribution network. IBM, Microsoft, and Google have their own FaaS offerings in the public cloud. There are over half-a-dozen open source serverless projects that are getting the attention of developers.

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If you are part of the cloud development community, you certainly know about “serverless computing,” almost a misnomer. Because it implies there are no servers which is untrue. However the servers are hidden from the developers. This model eliminates operational complexity and increases developer productivity.

We came from monolithic computing to client-server to services to microservices to the serverless model. In other words, our systems have slowly “dissolved” from monolithic to function-by-function. Software is developed and deployed as individual functions – a first-class object and cloud runs it for you. These functions are triggered by events that follow certain rules. Functions are written in a fixed set of languages, with a fixed set of programming models and cloud-specific syntax and semantics. Cloud-specific services can be invoked to perform complex tasks. So for cloud-native applications, it offers a new option. But the key question is what should you use it for and why.

Amazon’s AWS, as usual, spearheaded this in 2014 with an engine called AWS Lambda. It supports Node, Python, C# and Java. It uses AWS API triggers for many AWS services. IBM offers OpenWhisk as a serverless solution that supports Python, Java, Swift, Node, and Docker. IBM and third parties provide service triggers. The code engine is Apache OpenWhisk. Microsoft provides similar function in its Azure Cloud function. Google cloud function supports Node only and has lots of other limitations.

This model of computing is also called “event-driven” or FaaS (Function as a Service). There is no need to manage provisioning and utilization of resources, nor to worry about availability and fault-tolerance. It relieves the developer (or DevOps) from managing scale and operations. Therefore, the key marketing slogans are event-driven, continuous scaling, and pay by usage. This is a new form of abstraction that boils down to function as the granular unit.

At the micro-level, serverless seems pretty simple – just develop a procedure and deploy to the cloud. However, there are several implications. It imposes a lot of constraints on developers and brings a load of new complexities plus cloud lock-in. You have to pick one of the cloud providers and stay there, not easy to switch. Areas to ponder are cost, complexity, testing, emergent structure, vendor dependence, etc.

Serverless has been getting a lot of attention in the last couple of years. We will wait and see the lessons learned as more developers start deploying it in real-world web applications.

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Because Linkerd is a transparent proxy that runs alongside your application, there are no code changes required. It even comes with Prometheus to store the metrics for you and pre-built Grafana dashboards to show exactly what is important for your services – success rate, latency, and throughput.

In this session, we’ll explain what Linkerd provides for you, demo the installation of Linkerd on Kubernetes and debug a real world problem. We will also dig into what functionality you can build on top of the tools provided by Linkerd such as alerting and autoscaling.

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The KCSP program is a pre-qualified tier of vetted service providers that offer Kubernetes support, consulting, professional services and training for organizations embarking on their Kubernetes journey. The KCSP program ensures that enterprises get the support they’re looking for to roll out new applications more quickly and more efficiently than before, while feeling secure that there’s a trusted and vetted partner that’s available to support their production and operational needs.

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Containers and Kubernetes allow for code portability across on-premise VMs, bare metal, or multiple cloud provider environments. Yet, despite this portability promise, developers may include configuration and application definitions that constrain or even eliminate application portability. In this session we’ll describe best practices for «configuration as code» in a Kubernetes environment. We will demonstrate how a properly constructed containerized app can be deployed to both Amazon and Azure using the Kublr platform, and how Kubernetes objects, such as persistent volumes, ingress rules, and services, can be used to abstract from the infrastructure.

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GCP Marketplace is based on a multi-cloud and hybrid-first philosophy, focused on giving Google Cloud partners and enterprise customers flexibility without lock-in. It also helps customers innovate by easily adopting new technologies from ISV partners, such as commercial Kubernetes applications, and allows companies to oversee the full lifecycle of a solution, from discovery through management.

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Skeuomorphism usually means retaining existing design cues in something new that doesn’t actually need them. However, the concept of skeuomorphism can be thought of as relating more broadly to applying existing patterns to new technologies that, in fact, cry out for new approaches.
In his session at DevOps Summit, Gordon Haff, Senior Cloud Strategy Marketing and Evangelism Manager at Red Hat, discussed why containers should be paired with new architectural practices such as microservices rather than mimicking legacy server virtualization workflows and architectures.

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The LA Clippers are moving their CourtVision game-watching platform onto Amazon Web Services (AWS) and using machine learning to drive greater insights.

Clippers CourtVision, which was created alongside the NBA’s video tracking technology provider Second Spectrum, will have its data stored and analysed on AWS in real-time. The system uses cameras in every NBA arena to collect 3D spatial data, including ball and player locations and movements.

The system will also utilise Amazon SageMaker to build, train and deploy machine learning-driven stats which will appear on live broadcasts and official NBA videos. Clippers fans will be able to access greater insights, from frame-by-frame shots and analysis of whether a shot will go in, to live layouts of basketball plays.

The move with the Clippers comes hot on the heels of the Golden State Warriors moving to Google Cloud, utilising the company’s analytics tools for scouting reports and planning to host a mobile app on Google Cloud Platform.

On the court the two clubs have had recent differing fortunes, with the Warriors having won three of the last four championships. Yet the sporting arena is one of mutual interest to the biggest cloud providers. One of the guest speakers during the AWS re:Invent keynote in November was Formula 1 managing director of motor sports Ross Brawn, who explained how the sport’s machine learning projects were being ramped up after a softer launch this season. Alongside Formula 1, Major League Baseball is another important AWS customer.

“The combination of cloud computing and machine learning has the potential to fundamentally redefine how fans experience the sports they love,” said Mike Clayville, vice president of worldwide commercial sales at AWS. “With AWS, Second Spectrum and the LA Clippers leverage Amazon’s 20 years of experience in machine learning and AWS’s comprehensive suite of cloud services to provide fans with a deeper understanding of the action on the court.

“We look forward to working closely with both organisations as they invent new ways for fans to enjoy the game of basketball,” Clayville added.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

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It’s seconds out for round two of the cloud story – one which has hybrid and multi-cloud at its core, and is open but secured and managed properly.

That was the key message from IBM chief executive and chairman Ginni Rometty at IBM’s Think Conference in San Francisco earlier this week.

“I’ve often said we’re entering chapter two – it’s cloud and it’s hybrid,” Rometty told the audience. “In chapter one, 20% of your work has moved to the cloud, and it has mostly been driven by customer-facing apps, new apps being put in, or maybe some inexpensive compute. But the next 80%… is the core of your business. That means you’ve got to modernise apps to get there. We’re going from an era of cloud that was app-driven to ‘now we’re transforming mission critical.’

“It’s very clear to me that it’s hybrid,” Rometty added, “meaning you’ll have traditional IT, private clouds, [and] public clouds. On average, [if you] put your traditional aside, 40% will be private, 60% public. If you’re regulated it will be the other way around.

“The reason it’s so important to [have] open technologies is that skills are really scarce. But then you’ve got to have consistent security and management.”

Naturally, IBM has been reinforcing this strategic vision with action. The $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat announced in October, albeit not yet to close, is a clear marker of this. As this publication put it at the time, it plays nicely into containers and open technologies in general. Both sides needed each other; IBM gets the huge net of CIO and developers Red Hat provides, while Red Hat gets a sugar daddy as its open source revenues – albeit north of $3 billion a year – can’t compete with the big boys. It’s interesting to note that at the time Rometty said this move represented “the next chapter of the cloud…shifting business applications to hybrid cloud, extracting more data and optimising every part of the business.”

Rometty assured the audience at Think that IBM would continue to invest in this future journey. “This is going to be an era of co-creation,” she said. “It’s why we’ve put together the IBM Garage and the IBM Garage methodology. [It’s] design thinking, agile practices, prototype and DevOps… but with one switch – we do them all in a way that can immediately go from prototype and pilot to production scale.

“I think we are all standing at the beginning of chapter two of this digital reinvention,” Rometty added. “Chapter two will, in my mind, be enterprise driven.”

It is interesting to consider these remarks, along with those of Google Cloud’s new boss Thomas Kurian this week, and look back on what has previously happened in the process. Kurian told an audience at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference that Google was going to compete aggressively in the enterprise space through 2019 and beyond. This would presumably be music to the ears of Amir Hermelin, formerly product management lead at Google Cloud, who upon leaving in October opined the company spent too long dallying over its enterprise strategy.

If IBM and Google are advocating a new chapter in the cloud, it may be because the opening stanzas did not work out as well as hoped for either. As this publication has opined variously, the original ‘cloud wars’ have long since been won and lost. Amazon Web Services (AWS) won big time, with Microsoft Azure getting a distant second place and the rest playing for table stakes. Google’s abovementioned enterprise issues contributed, as well as IBM losing the key CIA cloud contract to AWS.

Today, with multi-cloud continuing to be a key theme, attention turns to the next wave of technologies which will run on the cloud, from blockchain, to quantum computing, to artificial intelligence (AI). Rometty noted some of the lessons learned with regards to AI initiatives, from putting in the correct information architecture, to whether you take an ‘inside out’ or ‘outside in’ approach to scale digital transformation.

There was one other key area Rometty discussed. “I think this chapter two of digital and AI is about scaling now, and embedding it everywhere in your business. I think this chapter two when it comes to the cloud is hybrid and is driven by mission critical apps now moving,” said Rometty. “But underpinning it for all of us is a chapter two in trust – and that’s going to be about responsible stewardship.”

The remark, which drew loud applause from the audience, is something we should expect to see a lot more of this year, if analyst firm CCS Insight is to be believed. At the company’s predictions event in October, the forecast was that the needle would move to trust as a key differentiator among cloud service providers in 2019. Vendors “recognise the importance of winning customers’ trust to set them apart from rivals, prompting a focus on greater transparency, compliance efforts and above all investment in the security,” CCS wrote.

You can watch the full presentation here.

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their experiences and use-cases? Attend the Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more.

Clare Hopping