Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/1300948
3 C O M M I S S I O N E D B Y AW S PAT H F I N D E R | T H E J O U R N E Y T O S E R V E R L E S S - F I R S T Executive Summary Serverless is more than a shiny new technology. In a recent survey of enterprises, more than 15% reported using serverless at the team level or above, and 43% said they expect to deploy serverless technology over the next two years (see Figure 1). This quantitative research is backed up by qualitative investigation. Across industries, organizational size and organizational maturity, serverless continues to gain widespread interest and adoption for enterprises and startups alike. The benefits of a serverless approach are compelling – a pay-for-value pricing model is cost-effective, and the elimination of tasks such as server management and scaling enables development teams to spend more time on new products, features and innovation. However, it's not enough to replace traditional infrastructure with functions as a service – benefiting from a serverless operational model requires a new way of thinking about application design. Many organizations treat this learning process as a journey. While organizations may embark on a serverless journey for different reasons, the way they do so is often similar: Choose a discrete task, build incrementally, and move forward one step at a time. Many choose to eschew refactoring – rebuilding their previous applications – and instead get started with serverless by building net new applications on top of, or in conjunction with, their existing architecture. Serverless, defined here as an operational model that eliminates the burdens of server and infrastructure management, has been widely adopted by the three companies covered in this paper: iRobot, a robotics-focused technology company; Alma Media, a European media company; and Fender, the American music giant. These companies first considered serverless for a variety of reasons –achieving rapid release cycles, lowering costs, scaling efficiently, and the ability to attract and retain top talent. Each of these companies also arrived at a similar conclusion: the decision to build 'serverless first.' For iRobot, Alma Media and Fender, building serverless-first means opting for serverless technologies as their first choice, which enables their teams to gain expertise with the new technologies quickly and achieve the agility, elasticity and total cost- efficiency benefits from the overall serverless operational model. This paper offers a closer examination of iRobot, Alma Media and Fender's serverless journeys. It highlights their adoption patterns as diverse customers with divergent starting points but shared goals – finding ways to deliver products faster, save money, scale efficiently and nurture team enthusiasm. We present these case studies to provide actionable insights to companies pursuing those same goals.