No abstract

No abstract

In the late-1950s, leasing time on an IBM 704 cost hundreds of dollars per minute. Today, cloud computing, that is, using IT as a service, on-demand and pay-per-use, is a widely used computing paradigm that offers large economies of scale. Born from a need to make platform as a service (PaaS) more accessible, fine-grained, and affordable, serverless computing has garnered interest from both industry and academia. This article aims to give an understanding of these early days of serverless computing: what it is, where it comes from, what is the current status of serverless technology, and what are its main obstacles and opportunities. The 1950s saw the emergence of two technologies that are currently shaping the world: containerization in shipping and timesharing in computing. By allowing shipping to become standardized and automated, the former gave rise to manufacturing and retail ecosystems, and ultimately to the economic phenomenon of globalization 1. By enabling multiple clients to share the same physical infrastructure, time-sharing gave rise to cloud computing and the modern digital ecosystems, which are key drivers for growth in knowledge-based societies 2. Whereas few could afford the costs of time-sharing services and paid dearly for simple computer simulations in the late-1950s, today over 80% of companies use the hundreds of services accessible as cloud computing (source: Studies by European Commission 3 and Cloudability (2018)), along with many private individuals. Following with remarkable regularity the evolution observed in the history of containerization, cloud services have adapted to offer better fitting containers that require less time to load (boot) and provide higher automation in handling (orchestrating) containers on behalf of the client. Serverless computing promises more: to achieve full-automation in managing fine-grained containers. Already,

General rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.• Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.