A Multivocal Literature Review of Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) Infrastructures and Implications for Software Developers

Jake Grogan, Connor Mulready, James McDermott, Martynas Urbanavicius, Murat Yilmaz, Yalemisew Abgaz, Andrew McCarren, Silvana Togneri MacMahon, Vahid Garousi, Peter Elger, Paul Clarke*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

14 Citations (Scopus)
372 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

In this paper, we provide a multivocal literature review of Function as a Service (FaaS) infrastructures. FaaS is an important, emerging category of cloud computing, which requires that software applications are designed and deployed using distributed, highly-decoupled service-based architectures, one example of which is the microservices architecture paradigm. FaaS is associated with on-demand functionality and allows developers to build applications without the overhead associated with server management. As such, FaaS is a type of serverless provisioning model wherein a provider dynamically manages and allocates machine resources, with the developers deploying source code into a production environment. This research provides an analysis of scalability, cost, execution times, integration support, and the constraints associated with FaaS services provided by several vendors: AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, and Azure Functions. We discuss the implications of the findings for software developers.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSystems, Software and Services Process Improvement - 27th European Conference, EuroSPI 2020, Proceedings
EditorsMurat Yilmaz, Paul Clarke, Jörg Niemann, Richard Messnarz
PublisherSpringer
Pages58-75
ISBN (Print)9783030564407
DOIs
Publication statusEarly online date - 10 Aug 2020
Event27th European Conference on Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement, EuroSPI 2020 - Düsseldorf, Germany
Duration: 09 Sept 202011 Sept 2020

Publication series

NameCommunications in Computer and Information Science
Volume1251 CCIS
ISSN (Print)1865-0929
ISSN (Electronic)1865-0937

Conference

Conference27th European Conference on Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement, EuroSPI 2020
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityDüsseldorf
Period09/09/202011/09/2020

Keywords

  • AWS Lambda
  • Cloud computing
  • Constraints
  • Functions-as-a-Service
  • Google Cloud Functions
  • Infrastructures
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Scalability
  • Serverless

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Computer Science
  • General Mathematics

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