Do Serverless and DevOps Go Together?

According to Global Market Insights, the serverless architecture market will reach $30 billion by the end of 2027. Cost benefits, enterprise-wide development, reducing complexities related to server positioning, cloud computing solutions, etc., are all set to fuel serverless architecture adoption.

Likewise, the rising popularity of agile practices and DevOps also seems to be complementing serverless demand. The serverless architecture supports DevOps operations to enhance development processes by providing agility and flexibility. 

The Growing Trend of Serverless Architecture?

SAP S/4HANA is the SaaS (software-as-a-service) version of the world’s most popular ERP system. It comprises an integrated business applications suite that allows proper pServerless computing is a method of “outsourcing” infrastructure and allied tasks to cloud service providers. Firms choose this method because it allows the operations and development teams to focus on the core development without having to worry too much about the operational aspects of infrastructure.

Some major benefits of serverless are:

• Controlled production deployment
• Easier and quicker patches or updates
• Increased productivity
• Seamless release rollouts

SAP S/4HANA Cloud runs on the SAP HANA database (in memory). The high-performance analysis program now utilizes AI, among several other technologies, to analyze bulk Serverless computing also shifts provisioning, scaling, scheduling, and related backend cloud operations and infrastructure roles to the cloud services. Developers get adequate time to build business logic and front-end applications. As a result, it eases up team workload and maximizes focus on innovation.

Technically, the method uses servers, but it is still called serverless because third-party hosts are involved in server provisioning and management. Cloud service providers like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud offer their serverless platform, which is fundamental in cloud-native application development. In fact, open-source projects like Kubeless and OpenFaaS are also adapting serverless technologies to their existing on-premises architecture.

Role of Serverless Platforms in Improving DevOps

The serverless architecture proves immensely beneficial for improving DevOps for a variety of reasons ranging from flexible deployments to seamless automation enablement and pipeline management. For instance, the immutability of serverless services can be beneficial for concurrent running of older and newer versions. This could help prevent service interruptions and drive flexible deployments.

Moreover, serverless computing offers a pay-as-you-go format – pay only for the resources used for the function. This leads to significant cost reductions, thus allowing greater savings compared to other cloud models. No surprise then that the serverless architecture is well received across various finance, business intelligence, and customer relationship management applications.

NoOps in the Serverless Environment – Is It a Prudent Choice?

DevOps intends to make application deployments smoother and faster, focusing on consistent improvement. NoOps, or no operations, is a concept developed by Forrester’s Mike Gualtieri, having the same core goals but without operations professionals.

Ideally, in a NoOps scenario, developers do not collaborate with the operations teams. Rather, NoOps leverages PaaS and serverless to access the resources required at the right time. This translates into the fact that users can securely utilize tools and services to deploy cloud components, which include code and infrastructure. In addition, NoOps promotes CI/CD pipeline for operations. 

DevOps vs. NoOps – Benefits & Challenges

While DevOps focuses on the collaboration between the operations team and developers, NoOps concentrates on complete automation. However, the target is the same – quicker time-to-market with improved software deployment. That said, the NoOps process has several benefits and challenges.

However, anything new has challenges and pitfalls. Businesses should aim to overcome those pitfalls and adapt to the latest technology seamlessly. Noted below are the three major obstacles that prevent enterprises from taking the big leap:

Benefits

Better Automation, Lesser Maintenance

NoOps eliminates additional labor needed to control the code ecosystem. No manual intervention is required, and every component is easy to maintain because it would be deployed like just another code.

Leverage The Cloud Benefits

Many innovative technologies encouraging extreme automation, such as FaaS (Function as a Service) and CaaS (Container as a Service), offer help with NoOps technology adoption. It shows enormous potential as Ops ramps up cloud resources, leading to increased capacity planning against DevOps in which Ops and Dev work in tandem to decide whether an application can run or not.

Lesser Dependence

NoOps also concentrates on the business outcomes by prioritizing tasks delivering value to users and reducing the reliance on the operations workforce, which further reduces time-to-market.

Challenges

Ops Remains Fundamental

Theoretically, zeroing down your dependence on the operations team taking care of the application infrastructure sounds too good to be true. Pragmatically, the operations team is needed to monitor the results and handle exceptions. If you expect developers to manage these responsibilities entirely, it diverts their focus from delivering results, which would not be beneficial for NoOps.

Moreover, you cannot rely on developers solely because their skill sets may not include tackling operational concerns. Furthermore, you would not want to overwhelm developers with more tasks.

Security Issues

Even if you deploy best practices for security aligned with automated deployments, you still cannot eliminate the basic need to manage security. Since methods of attack are evolving and changing every day, it is pertinent to update the security controls of the cloud.

Removing Ops teams entirely means you would have to invest more funds into the security team and instill the best methods for compliance and security of the environments.

Study The Environment

As NoOps uses PaaS and serverless for resources, this could be a limitation, typically during digital transformation. Hybrid deployments and legacy infrastructures still make automation possible, but human intervention cannot be eliminated. So, consider that all environments cannot switch to NoOps. Evaluate the consequences of this transition.

The Bottom Line

Eventually, both serverless and DevOps can go together. Likewise, NoOps shall also offer a serverless environment. The choice lies in being more intelligent about using resources, including workforce, hardware, and software. In the end, it is all about cutting wastage of resources and allied costs and enabling talent to concentrate on innovative coding. 

Undoubtedly, serverless DevOps is way more than simply achieving agility. It is directed towards rapid delivery of business value so businesses can deliver innovative products quickly. Let us connect if you want to know more about how to adopt serverless in your operations.