What is serverless computing?
Serverless computing delegates much of server provisioning and capacity management to a service provider. The name does not mean that servers disappear; developers work with functions and services instead of directly managing physical or virtual servers.
Event-driven operation
An HTTP request, file upload or queue message can trigger a short-lived function. The provider allocates execution capacity according to incoming work. This suits irregular traffic and independent small tasks. Because function instances can be temporary, important state should not exist only in memory; it needs persistent storage. Preparing an idle environment can add latency to the first request. This is called a cold start, and its impact varies by platform and application. Systems that can redeliver events need idempotent designs to prevent duplicate effects. For example, a repeated order message should not charge the customer twice.
Cost, limits and suitable uses
Serverless architectures can support image resizing, notification processing, scheduled tasks and API endpoints. Usage-based billing may benefit low-traffic workloads, but it should not be assumed cheapest for sustained heavy processing. Execution duration, memory, concurrency and network restrictions influence the design. Without planned logging, monitoring and retries, distributed failures become difficult to diagnose. Tight coupling to provider-specific services can reduce portability. Security responsibilities also remain: application permissions, data access and dependency updates still require attention. Selection should consider latency, cost and operational requirements as well as the convenience of avoiding server provisioning.