How Container and Serverless Architecture Transform Modern Operations

On September 10, the CNUTCon Global Operations Conference was held at the Shanghai World Expo Center Hotel, focusing on the theme “New Operations in the Intelligent Era” and exploring hot topics such as big data, machine learning, AI, virtualization, and containerization.

UCloud was the first speaker in the opening day’s “Container and Operations Solutions” session. Innovation Product Line R&D Director Ye Liding presented “Container and Serverless Architecture Practice”.

Core Content of the Presentation

Starting from the resource waste caused by virtualization, the talk introduced a compute‑service‑oriented solution and examined IaaS and PaaS from that perspective, leading to the concept of Serverless. Serverless, literally “No Server”, was first proposed in 2012 by Ken Fromm, who asked why the future of software and apps is Serverless.

The concept gained real traction in 2014 when the industry realized that completely eliminating backend code was unrealistic; some backend logic—such as scheduled DB updates or business tasks—still needed to run.

Serverless evolved into a model where backend logic is packaged as functions and hosted on a function‑compute service, allowing developers to focus on front‑end code and functions without managing servers.

The discussion emphasized that introducing function compute is a technical advancement for Serverless.

Using UCloud’s Serverless product – UCloud Universal Compute – the architecture diagram is shown below:

Practical Use Cases

1. Image Processing

The presentation described image‑processing requirements and operational pain points, then demonstrated the architecture and benefits after adopting Universal Compute.

2. Gene Data Processing

It outlined the needs and architectural challenges of gene data processing and showed how Universal Compute addresses them.

3. OCR Recognition

The session highlighted OCR recognition requirements and resource‑waste pain points, then presented the architecture and advantages of using Universal Compute.

Serverless is expected to bring great convenience to developers and create significant industry impact, and UCloud remains committed to meeting user needs in the new intelligent operations era.

About CNUTCon

CNUTCon Global Operations Conference, organized by InfoQ, is a two‑day event for senior technical professionals interested in operations and container technologies. Its mission is to share cutting‑edge technology, practical experience, best practices, and stimulate ideas, helping participants understand industry trends, evaluate solutions, and anticipate risks and benefits for successful technology adoption.