To meet the need for faster deployments and a scalable, cost-efficient infrastructure, a leading global manufacturer of electronic components worked with us to reach those goals faster. They needed a modern application to track component lifecycles, demands, and delivery timelines, and calculate costs and risks through reports and data visualizations. Their ultimate objective? Iterative development cycles with continuous feedback, rapid change management, and cost optimization. The solution to get there? Serverless Function as a Service (FaaS) architecture, using AWS Lambda and Node.js.
With this new serverless architecture, they eliminated infrastructure management overhead, accelerated deployments, and were able to scale more flexibly to meet fluctuating demand.
The results were compelling and tangible:
- Reduced operational costs
- Improved system performance and ability to scale quickly and cost-effectively
- Ability to deliver new features faster with a smaller development team
- No need for server health monitoring or manual scaling
- Seamless integration with other AWS services
- Optimized cold start times and caching strategies
A short history of infrastructure modernization
Infrastructure has certainly changed over the years, with modern software development continuously pushing to isolate complexity and make operations easier and cheaper. We’ve gone from bare-metal servers, demanding dedicated teams and complex configuration, to virtual machines that improved hardware utilization and deployment efficiency, and containers that simplified rapid environment setup and application deployment. The common denominator? They all require developer management and maintenance. Then came FaaS, and infrastructure management was finally removed from developers’ responsibilities. This marks the first big leap toward true serverless computing.
What is FaaS?
FaaS is a cloud computing model with a serverless architecture that makes the lives of developers easier and more productive. Take note, however, that “serverless” doesn’t mean physical servers and virtualization no longer exist. It simply means they are hidden from developers, freeing them from time-consuming server maintenance tasks. They can now deploy and run code without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. AWS Lambda, Amazon’s serverless FaaS solution, automates compute resources and scales code execution in response to events like HTTP requests, file uploads, or database changes.
Why FaaS with AWS Lambda?
It’s no secret that FaaS with Lambda is a popular choice for companies that already use containers. In fact, 80% of AWS container users have adopted Lambda, and that trend continues to grow for enterprises. Its speed, flexibility, and pay-per-use cost-efficiency mean it is particularly well-suited for enterprise operations with thousands of parallel executions, variable or unpredictable activity, and rapid scalability needs.
Why Node.js for FaaS?
AWS Lambda supports most programming languages, but Node.js is particularly good for serverless and I/O-intensive workloads because it is asynchronous and event-driven. It is also preferable for customer-facing applications where latency is non-negotiable.
Challenges to consider when adopting FaaS
We’ve touched on the advantages of FaaS, and we won’t leave out the unique challenges it can introduce in specific scenarios either. For example, in this case study, we experienced cold starts when a function was called after long periods of inaction, caching limitations, and issues with code and dependency size. But not for long. Download the case study to see exactly how we addressed these challenges while optimizing cost and performance.
The bottom line? With the right technology partner and battle-tested optimizations, you will see significant improvements in development velocity, scalability, cost, and operational efficiency.
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