Customers benefit most in a cloud delivery model.

The cloud enables businesses to be more agile, increase performance and operate effectively. Above all else, it removes the burden of managing software infrastructure. These resources and energy can be reinvested into products and customers.

Let’s revisit the past 30 years of IT.

Digital services have historically required a investment in IT infrastructure:

The above dates vary by adopter, but a technology burden remains at all points on the timeline.

How does this benefit customers?

If the product is not IT infrastructure, customers lack interest in how the enabling technology is implemented. Expend energy on the actual product by letting experts manage the technology stack. The time and resources required to manage infrastructure well are costly. The cloud makes this affordable by leveraging economies of scale. You benefit from expert providers pooling resources for the masses. It doesn’t matter that competitors use the same services. Your product is competing on quality and customer service. Leaving the low-level details of technology delivery to a dedicated partner is an advantage.

A shift in focus…

Something unexpected happens in IT when unburdened of physical hardware, operating system patches and software updates. A pay-as-you-go model leads to asking questions that time previously did not permit. Waste also becomes more apparent. For example, why pay to operate the resources for peak traffic while customers sleep and services idle? Could we just suspend operations until customers return? Why should we pay anything to offer a service that is never used? Can services only run when customers want them? How must we compose systems to support that?

What is serverless?

Serverless replaces virtual machines, operating systems and software installations with managed services from cloud providers. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is still a valid option in some circumstances, but cost management of cloud services is often better optimized with other models. Serverless lets us rethink solution delivery with a plug-and-play mindset. Today begins a series of articles to leave behind servers and software installations. We’ll start by exploring managed cloud services that substitute for common system components.