You might have heard the buzzword serverless previously, perhaps through your colleagues or cloud advocate. You must have wondered what this means for your enterprise or for you as developer, architect, or DevOps associate. However, do not get confused by the word serverless; it does not refer to the process of running your code without servers.
For an enterprise, serverless actually means managing the enterprise's IT workload in cloud without having to make vast investments in setting up an infrastructure to run products and services. For new and existing organizations, a serverless platform means that an enterprise need only be billed for consumed resources.
For developers, serverless means writing efficient code that makes the most of the resources available. Cloud computing has evolved over time, and we need to appreciate this when making applications for the cloud. The following diagram describes the journey of cloud computing:
Throughout this journey, Microsoft has invested heavily in making its infrastructure more suited to customer requirements in a much more efficient manner. With Azure, Microsoft's own cloud service, there are numerous platforms and services that let you get started without having to consider the internal infrastructure and any starting costs. These platforms include Azure Functions, Logic Apps, Cosmos DB, Data Factory, API Management, and many more. In this book, we will concentrate on Microsoft's serverless integration stack and how you can take advantage of these serverless platforms in the real world.