A serverless architecture is a new approach to offering services over the Internet. It combines BaaS (Backendas-a-service) and FaaS (Function-as-a-service). With the serverless architecture no own or rented infrastructures are needed anymore. In addition, the company does not have to worry about scaling any longer, as this happens automatically and immediately. Furthermore, there is no need any longer for maintenance work on the servers, as this is completely taken over by the provider. Administrators are also no longer needed for the same reason. Finally, many ready-made functions are offered, with which the development effort can be reduced. As a result, the serverless architecture is very well suited to many application scenarios, and it can save considerable costs (server costs, maintenance costs, personnel costs, electricity costs, etc.). The company only must subdivide the source code of the application and upload it to the provider's server. The rest is done by the provider.

This paper is aimed at helping organizations to understand what they can expect from a serverless architecture in the future and how they can make sound decisions about the choice between microservice and serverless architectures in the present. A serverless architecture is a new approach to offering services in the cloud. It was invented as a solution to the problem that many organizations are facing today – about 85% of their servers have underutilized capacity, which is proved to be costly and wasteful. By employing the serverless architecture, the organizations get a way to eliminate idle, underutilized servers and thus, to reduce their operational costs. Many cloud providers are now jumping to the serverless world because they know it is going to be the future of software architectures. However, being a new approach, the serverless architecture is still relatively immature – it is in the early stages of its support by cloud service platform providers. This paper provides an in-depth study about the serverless architecture and how to apply FaaS in the real world.