Gartner Application Strategies & Solutions Summit

Summit 2017
4 – 6 December 2017 / Las Vegas, NV

Serverless Platforms and PaaS:

Distilling the Application Development Process
Paul Vincent

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 Changing Times
Do you really need
application developers
to control infrastructure
details?

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Serverless

Serverless
Serverless applications
Serverless
application architecture e.g., SaaS
development e.g., some
e.g., functions xPaaS
fPaaS

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Serverless
Our area
of interest!

Serverless
Serverless applications
Serverless
application architecture e.g., SaaS
development e.g., some
e.g., functions xPaaS
fPaaS

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Key Issues

1. Why is serverless an important trend?

2. How are organizations leveraging serverless?
3. What are the lessons for IT?

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Key Issues

1. Why is serverless an important trend?

2. How are organizations leveraging serverless?
3. What are the lessons for IT?

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Gartner Definition

Serverless computing is
a model of IT service delivery
where the underlying enabling resources are
 Utilized as an opaque, virtually unlimited shared pool,

 Continuously available without preprovisioning,

and
 Priced in the units of the consumed IT service.

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 fPaaS

Serverless (Some) dbPaaS

(PaaS)
hpaPaaS
New computing abstractions (e.g., serverless platforms) are
altering how we consume and operate computing environments

From "Hype Cycle for Platform as a Service, 2017," 19 July 2017 (G00314146)
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Challenges for IT

What How Where

infra. control is do we gain can we pivot to a
key to apps? application digital business?
productivity?

Prove When Manage

risks are can we costs!
managed innovate?

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Cost Reduction
fPaaS
Runtime
Manage Cost 2 VMs
costs!

1 VM

No. of TXs
Ref: https://www.cloudhealthtech.com/blog/how-use-lambda-ec2-save-most-money
and https://www.trek10.com/blog/lambda-cost/
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Serverless as a Trend

 Productivity
 Extends cloud-native
 True autoscaling
 Match costs to value
 Focus on business priorities

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Key Issues

1. Why is serverless an important trend?

2. How are organizations leveraging serverless?
3. What are the lessons for IT?

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Users of Serverless

AccuWeather

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Amazon Web Services —
FINRA OATS Validator
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority
= Nongovernment organization overseeing U.S. brokerage firms
Order Audit Trail System (OATS):
 Audit trail of order, quote and trade information for all National Market System
(NMS) stocks and over-the-counter (OTC) equity securities
OATS validator:
 Validate record submissions —
up to 6 billion events per day
 AWS Amazon S3 record arrival event
triggers AWS Lambda function
containing business logic
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Top Reported Benefits From Use Cases

1. Lower or managed cost (not based on VM-uptime)

2. Simplicity of use/reduced management
3. Developer productivity (fPaaS up 20%)
4. Scalability
5. Separation of concerns/independence of services (DB, functions …)
6. No requirement for capacity planning
7. Standardized architecture (fPaaS means event-driven)

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Serverless Services … for Pro IT and Business IT

fPaaS: dbPaaS: hpaPaaS:

AWS Lambda AWS S3, DynamoDB Salesforce Lightning, Force.com
Azure Functions Azure Storage, CosmosDB Azure PowerApps
Google Cloud Functions Google Cloud Storage, BigQuery Google App Maker
IBM Cloud Functions Oracle Database Schema Service Oracle Visual Builder
Cloud Service, APEX
Framework: OutSystems
Serverless Mendix
Iron.io (+ 50 others …)
Also bpmPaaS
Also:
apiPaaS, iPaaS, epPaaS, momPaaS, adPaaS …

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Serverless Stacks Are Growing

Serverless Computing Serverless Computing

from AWS from Microsoft
AWS Lambda Azure Functions
Amazon API Gateway Azure API Management
Amazon S3/Amazon Athena Azure Storage
Amazon DynamoDB Azure Logic Apps
Amazon SNS Azure Event Grid
Amazon SQS Azure Service Bus
AWS Step Functions Azure Stream Analytics
Amazon Kinesis Azure Event Hub
Amazon Cognito/AWS IAM Azure Bot Service
Amazon Lex / Polly / Rekognition Azure Cognitive Services
Ref: https://aws.amazon.com/serverless/ Azure Active Directory
Ref: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
gb/overview/serverless-computing/

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Key Issues

1. Why is serverless computing an important trend?

2. How are organizations leveraging serverless?
3. What are the lessons for IT?

20 © 2017 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

 New computing abstractions (e.g., serverless platforms) are
altering how we consume and operate computing environments,
… but (as of 2017) they're immature for
deployment across a broad set of use cases.

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Application Development and Deployment Trends …

GEN1 GEN2 GEN3

VMs Containers Serverless

Platform*
DevOps
+ PlatformOps Platform* Platform* PaaS*
View
* Platform on VMs, Containers
vs. PaaS With Serverless

Custom Code and Administration Effort Under Customer's Control

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1. Your VMs and Containers Are a Means to an End

1. Applications are moving

to cloud, and to serverless
2. BUT legacy and heritage
applications will not disappear
overnight!

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2. Note the Strengths and Weaknesses of Serverless

1. Scalability and concurrency A. Tooling immature

outsourced B. Vendor differences/lock-in
2. Reduction in capital costs C. Incomplete set of services
3. Increase efficiency (of resources)
4. Benefits of containers but without
the complexity
5. fPaaS for event handling + processing
6. Increase developer productivity
7. Most benefits are cloud-based
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3. IT Abstraction Levels Are Always Rising

 Business interest is in digital business

(what not how)
 Increase in commodity IT services:
– SaaS
– High productivity aPaaS
 Consider what is the best value from IT

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Recommendations

 Consider serverless IT approaches like dbPaaS where:

(a) Technology is sufficiently mature and
(b) There is no differentiating technology or cost benefit due
to being server-based
 For hpaPaaS: Consider whether business-IT solves certain enterprise
applications e.g., mobile UI, departmental apps
 For fPaaS:
– Invest time upfront getting team up and running fPaaS
– Invest in event-thinking, and your dev., test, build and release pipeline
– Use fPaaS sparingly to solve specific problems
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Action Plan for CIOs

Monday Morning:
 What current initiatives should be considering a serverless approach —
database renewal? Microservices? Should serverless be considered?
Next 90 Days:
 Evaluate fPaaS and hpaPaaS fit-for-purpose for new applications
 Review previous PaaS selections that are not serverless
 Gain experience of serverless in a suitable project
Next 12 Months:
 Review your strategic plan for applications regarding applicability
of serverless platforms versus cloud appetite and modernization priorities

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Recommended Gartner Research

 The Key Trends in PaaS, 2017

Yefim V. Natis and Paul Vincent (G00313016)
 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2017
Mike J. Walker (G00314560)
 Evolution of Server Computing: VMs to Containers to Serverless — Which to Use When?
Arun Chandrasekaran (G00325432)
 Adding Serverless Computing and fPaaS to Your Cloud-Native Architecture Toolbox
Traverse Clayton (G00318340)
 Platform as a Service: Definition, Taxonomy and Vendor Landscape, 2016
Yefim V. Natis, Van L. Baker, Rob Dunie, Bern Elliot, Donald Feinberg and Others (G00279886)
 New Pricing Models for Cloud DBMSs Provide Cost Optimization Opportunities
Adam M. Ronthal, Donald Feinberg and Merv Adrian (G00317173)
 Case Studies in Using Serverless Technologies to Build Commercial Software Products
Craig Lowery (G00323001)
For more information, stop by Gartner Zone.
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