SaaS has become the business standard for software companies, replacing the traditional model of clients needing to purchase hardware, manually install software, then maintain and secure underlying infrastructure. SaaS models also become attractive pricing models to companies leasing 3rd party software. The traditional model of payment structure comes with one very large payment every few years, compared to smaller payments in shorter intervals with the SaaS model. The cloud compliments SaaS models in agility, pricing models, and security with its potential for elasticity, automation, and scalability. For any SaaS company looking to improve service performance and increase business scalability, the cloud proves itself as the ideal IT infrastructure candidate.
Before SaaS, clients paid large upfront costs in IT infrastructure to host software, also paid for, as well as maintain the hosting platforms. Software and capital expenditures in infrastructure were a significant burden and became outdated as software and hardware advanced. Moving into current trends, SaaS traffic can be volatile, and the user base fluctuates frequently. For any SaaS business, it’s critical for architecture to accommodate the fluctuous nature of their traffic, and cloud computing offers many benefits for these use cases. Specifically, cloud architecture opens the door to innovative architecture that was once impossible in a traditional data center architecture: serverless.
Ultimately, serverless means scalability, since much of the underlying architecture can be abstracted, that means architecture can be separated into distinct business functions where teams can specialize in specific application-level requirements instead of focusing on making code integrate with a singular and often difficult to maintain the application. Additionally, when an application is broken into components, the application is distributed and lowers the risks that come with single points of failure. Separation of resources into business logic, teams focused on application specialization, and fault tolerance through distributed systems are the key benefits of serverless.
Serverless architecture is particularly suited for SaaS use cases since it offers rapid scalability, lower latency, generally lower costs, and a layer of abstraction above the work required for server management. While serverless architecture offers many benefits to fit SaaS requirements, the manual work required for implementation is steep, particularly to take advantage of serverless benefits and implement the complex monitoring solutions required since debugging becomes difficult in the abstracted environment.
The work for migrating to serverless begins with dependencies, identifying where application logic is tightly coupled with other resources, such as a database. When functionality is so tightly connected, meaning there isn’t a defined interface for applications to call to communicate with other application components, then the work becomes much harder to divide and separate components into a serverless environment. Delta Cloud Systems begins this complex task of dependency separation first, to identify where the separations of business logic will require the most focus. When this initial discovery process is performed first and thoroughly, it lays the foundation for a targeted and smooth migration process.
The benefits of serverless architectures are large and span further than just engineering departments, but work for this IT transformation needs to be thoroughly planned, executed, and maintained with multiple parties involved. From staff training to reallocating roles, this requires expertise and great care. Delta Cloud Systems is an agile experienced company delivering this level of diligence and care, please contact us for further information on the serverless transformation.
Read More