re:Invent News Analysis: Enterprise Serverless

Watch a video overview

AWS puts on one of the largest tech conferences on the planet—and they've mastered it. Even though 2020’s virtual re:Invent will be very different from the venue at the Venetian, I’m certain AWS will put on another great show. I’m also certain they will give us all a massive onslaught of new products and capabilities, customer success stories, partner updates, and more.

As exciting as the news coming out of re:Invent is, it can also be daunting. There’s a lot. A real lot. But there’s no need to worry—the team at Stackery has perfected helping people quickly learn about and take advantage of the latest from AWS!

During the weeks of re:Invent, Stackery will be highlighting the most salient serverless news from AWS. Chase will cover architectural news announced each week, Farrah will showcase AWS users doing powerful things with serverless, Ryan will cull news around the intersection of DevOps & Serverless, and I will summarize announcements around serverless in the Enterprise.

Specifically, I’ll dig into these topics that are top of mind for our enterprise customers.

• Navigating the tension between developer speed and enterprise governance—think security, consistency, etc.
• How current SDLC practices apply to serverless—like infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, policy enforcement, etc.
• The modern, hybrid app—how to get the best of the cloud by combining serverless, containers, legacy tech, and more.

Navigating the tension between developer speed and enterprise governance—think security, consistency, etc.

Too many engineering teams are stymied by Central IT and DevOps teams. It’s not because these centralized organizations want to block innovation, but often these centralized organizations impede pervasive adoption of powerful AWS managed services because they are entrenched in established policies and processes. They fear that autonomous and rapid development on the cloud compromises consistency, security, and governance.

The result is that development teams are held back by central IT and operations teams that lack solutions for providing safe, secure AWS development autonomy. I expect to see more from AWS to help bridge this divide with more guidance on Well-Architected design patterns and security best practices.

How current DevOps & SDLC practices apply to serverless—like infrastructure as code, CI/CD, policy enforcement, etc.

The recent DevOps movement has taught us that there are key SDLC practices—for development and ops—that are important to all high-performing teams: infrastructure-as-code (IaC), CI/CD, and security shifted to the left are just a few. In fact, I believe that IaC is the way all apps will be shipped in the future since it’s the most important foundational practice that enables so many other modern DevOps and SDLC best practices.

With serverless, the practice of IaC is required (not simply recommended). This unlocks all sorts of quality, security, automation, and consistency benefits. I look forward to seeing what AWS has in mind to help further these modern practices.

The modern, hybrid app—how to get the best of the cloud by combining serverless, containers, legacy tech, and more.

I see more-and-more companies use modern application techniques to yield the speed and scale of cloud development, along with options for securely integrating with legacy systems. In most cases, these organizations aim to provide a cutting-edge experience to their customers, abstracting them from the old, but necessary legacy systems at work under-the-covers.

The result is that more-and-more organizations are building modern applications that combine managed service offerings (e.g., functions, API gateways, queues, tables, object stores, etc.), SaaS offerings, and customer-owned new and legacy components. AWS is the leader in supporting these modern, hybrid applications—so I will be keeping an eye out for all news related to how they will help us all move further down this powerful path.

Wrap Up

This is an exciting time of year to be part of the AWS ecosystem. I love the partnership that spans customers, ISVs like Stackery, AWS, developer advocates, consulting partners, and more—and the camaraderie of the ecosystem really shines at re:Invent. I expect the same this year. I look forward to connecting with so many of you. I look forward to the news coming out of the event. And I look forward to sharing Stackery’s point-of-view to help make sense of it all.

Follow Stackery on Twitter to see all of the Stackery serverless news digests, and more.