Is serverless dead?

Jun 17, 2024

During the last month, the news that the serverless developer advocacy team has been disbanded has been made public. Now I’m back in the AWS Developer Relations organization with my colleagues. However, this has led to speculation that serverless might be losing relevance. This couldn't be further from the truth, and I want to prove it to you in this post.

TLDR; Serverless is not dead; it has become a fundamental aspect of how companies build and deploy applications.

Serverless evolution

When serverless emerged, it was a revolutionary yet strange concept for many developers, including myself. The term serverless was coined after AWS Lambda was launched. However, before that term emerged there were already serverless services such as Amazon S3 and Amazon SQS. These were used widely for building cloud applications but nobody called them serverless.

But when a compute service like AWS Lambda was launched, the idea of not running your servers felt alien as developers were used to managing their infrastructure, ensuring uptime, and dealing with scaling issues. Handing all that over to a cloud provider seemed risky and unconventional.

As time passed, developers saw the benefits of serverless and managed services. The promise of not worrying about server management and the pay-as-you-use model began to resonate. Now they could focus on writing code and delivering features rather than maintaining servers.

Over the past ten years since AWS Lambda's introduction, serverless has proven its value. It has become a standard in cloud computing, making managed services a default choice for many. This shift has taught us to rely on the cloud not only for our infrastructure needs but also for their building blocks to build our applications. Trusting its ability to manage everything from scaling to security.

Today, serverless is no longer a niche technology. It’s widely adopted and integral to modern application development. Organizations of all sizes use serverless to build scalable, efficient applications quickly. We’ve come to expect these capabilities as developers, and they’ve become a fundamental part of our toolkit.

The future of serverless

There is a lot to be said about the future of serverless, as serverless is the real cloud native. When using managed services to build applications, you write code that solves business problems and go market fast with your solutions. However, as Ben Kehoe said serverless is a spectrum, and not everything will be 100% serverless all the time.

We saw this change in our Serverless Developer Advocate team last year when we merged with the Serverless containers Developer Advocates to create the “Better Together model”. The idea was to bring serverless and containers together. As we saw that developers who chose the right tool for their problems were getting the best results.

But in the tech world, things move fast, and as we move into the era of generative AI, the role of serverless becomes even more critical. Generative AI is a hot topic, reshaping how we think about application development.

Services like ChatGPT or AWS Bedrock are serverless services hosted by cloud providers. They allow us to integrate powerful AI capabilities into our applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. Applications can suddenly take off, and managing the scale manually would be daunting.

Serverless architecture naturally fits this model, providing automatic scaling and resource management. It enables us to build AI-powered applications that can handle variable workloads effortlessly, using services like Step Functions, AWS Lambda, and AWS Fargate to develop more complex AI applications.

The disbanding of the serverless developer advocacy team does not signal the end of serverless. Instead, it reflects how serverless has matured and become a stable, essential part of the tech landscape. We no longer need an advocacy team because serverless has proven its worth and integrated deeply into how we build applications.

Serverless is here to stay, evolving alongside other technologies like AI to drive the future of application development. Developers now can leverage serverless and AI together, to build more intelligent, scalable, and efficient applications.

So, don't worry—serverless is not dead; it’s thriving and paving the way for the next generation of technological advancements. And the ex-serverless developer advocates will continue to talk about serverless for sure, at least I’m not going anywhere.

If you want to go more in-depth on this topic, my colleague Eric Johnson has delivered a talk at ServerlessDays Italy. You can watch it here.

Content round-up

Here is a round-up of the content I created during the last month:

Talking about generative AI and Serverless, last month I launched a new LinkedIn Learning course about orchestrating AI applications where I show you how to use Step Functions for your Bedrock applications and build Bedrock Agents with Lambda. Check it out here (and if you follow me on Linkedin this week I will be sharing access to this course for a limited time ;)

In addition, this month a new series of videos started. These videos are special as they are a collaboration with the serverless community to address the most common career questions. These videos will be published every Thursday until August when I’m back from my break from YouTube.

Watch the series trailer

Episode 1 - What does a Software Engineer in the Cloud do?: In this first episode three cloud software engineers, Danielle Heberling, Ian McKay, and Lorenzo Hidalgo, provide an in-depth look at their roles and responsibilities, key tasks, and the challenges they face working in cloud computing.
Episode 2 - How did you get your first job working with cloud computing?: In this episode, Andres Moreno, Heather Woods, and Sarang Kumar share their journeys and insights into breaking into the cloud computing field. They discuss how they got their first job in cloud computing. They highlight the importance of continuous learning, soft skills, and being adaptable to technology changes. And what employers are looking for when hiring.
Episode 3 - From Junior Developer to Cloud Expert: Join Santiago Garcia, Andrea Merariu, and Paul Jin Jr. as they share advice on succeeding as a cloud developer. Gain insights on transitioning from junior to senior roles, the importance of self-learning, understanding client requirements, and improving technical and soft skills. Learn about the benefits of joining software communities and leveraging social media for professional growth. Discover personal experiences, challenges, and strategies to stay current in the ever-evolving tech landscape.
Episode 4 - What is your cloud job about?: In this episode, Hazel Saenz, Sarang Kumar, and Anastasia Kondratieva delve into the roles and responsibilities of software architects, software engineers, and site reliability engineers (SREs) within the cloud environment. Learn about the tasks they perform daily, the challenges they face, and the skills required to excel in these pivotal positions. Gain valuable insights into designing solutions, managing cloud-native applications, ensuring system reliability, and overcoming the misconceptions of each role. Discover how these professionals contribute to the seamless operation and innovation of their organizations.
Episode 5 - Journey to the Cloud: Join us as Anastasia Kontratieva, Paul Chin Jr., and Danielle Heberling share their personal and professional journeys in cloud development and site reliability engineering (SRE). From diverse starting points as a translator, music teacher, and non-tech professional, each speaker reveals how they transitioned into their current roles using self-learning, boot camps, and community resources.

That is all for today!

And that is a wrap for this newsletter, hope you like this format. Let me know in the comments if there are some topics you would like to discuss or if you have a different view of the state of Serverless, do you think is still relevant? Are you still building with serverless? What about your AI projects?