Engineering the Future of Software
16–18 October 2017: Conference & Tutorials
18–19 October 2017: Training
London, UK

Practical examples of serverless architecture

Scott Davis (ThoughtWorks)
10:45–12:15 Monday, 16 October 2017
Distributed systems
 Location: King's Suite - Sandringham
Secondary topics:  Best Practice, Case Study, Overview
Average rating: **...
(2.13, 38 ratings)

Prerequisite Knowledge

  • Experience with web architecture (useful but not required)

What you'll learn

  • Explore the strengths and weaknesses of serverless and learn how it is being used out in the wild

Description

When John Gage, chief scientist at Sun Microsystems, said, “The network is the computer,” Sun was in the business of selling expensive, premium network servers. It’s hard to talk about networks without immediately mentioning servers in the same breath—web servers, email servers, database servers. . .the list goes on.

But what does a networked app look like without the server? Scott Davis explores a spectrum of environments, from platforms as a service (PaaS) to container hosting, and walks you down the evolutionary trail from microservices and backends as a service (BaaS) to canonical, truly serverless solutions like OpenWhisk and AWS Lambda—e.g., functions as a service (FaaS). Along the way, Scott shares real-life case studies and use cases for serverless solutions like AWS Lambda, OpenWhisk, and building conversational UIs with Amazon Alexa. The server isn’t dead (yet), but web frameworks like the Serverless Framework sure make an intriguing argument.

Photo of Scott Davis

Scott Davis

ThoughtWorks

Scott Davis is a Web Architect and Developer Advocate with ThoughtWorks, where he focuses on the leading-edge, innovative, emerging, and nontraditional aspects of web development, such as serverless web apps, mobile web apps (responsive PWAs), HTML5-based smart TV apps, conversational UIs (like Siri and Alexa), and using web technologies to build IoT solutions. He is also the founder of ThirstyHead.com, a Denver-based training and software development consultancy. Scott has been writing about web development for over 10 years. His books include Getting Started with Grails, Groovy Recipes, GIS for Web Developers, The Google Maps API: Adding Where to Your Web Applications, and JBoss at Work. He is also the author of several popular article series at IBM developerWorks, including Mastering MEAN, Mastering Grails, and Practically Groovy. His videos include Architecture of the MEAN Stack, Responsive Mobile Architecture, and On the Road to Angular 2. Scott is also the cofounder of the Denver HTML5 User Group.

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Comments

Natnael Mekuannt Getu | SENIOR FULL-STACK DEVELOPER
18/10/2017 16:39 BST

Thank you for you talk, but to be honest I was expecting something better.

  • You spent a lot of time speaking about Alexa, Apple and etc..
  • You did not clarify the weakness of serverless at all
  • Your talk was focused Just about Lambda, what about other players such as Azure (even if you are not fun of microsoft)

Overall this conference was bit disappointed.