Serverless computing enables enterprises to buy business functions and have the compute, storage, and networking tasks managed in the background. But how well will this model work for your organization—and which vendors offer the best options for your needs? This ebook, based on the most recent ZDNet/TechRepublic special report, looks at how serverless architecture works, its pros and cons, and the providers that currently dominate the field.

From the ebook:

Serverless architecture is a style of programming for cloud platforms that’s changing the way applications are built, deployed, and—ultimately—consumed. So where do servers enter the picture?

Serverless computing is not, despite its name, the elimination of servers from distributed applications. Serverless architecture refers to a kind of illusion, originally made for the sake of developers whose software will be hosted in the public cloud, but which extends to the way people eventually use that software. Its main objective is to make it easier for a software developer to compose code, intended to run on a cloud platform, that performs a clearly defined job.

If all the jobs on the cloud were, in a sense, “aware” of one another and could leverage each other’s help when they needed it, the whole business of whose servers are hosting them could become trivial, perhaps irrelevant. And not having to know those details might make these jobs easier for developers to program. Conceivably, much of the work involved in attaining a desired result, might already have been done.