Is Serverless the Future? Uncover Trends, Challenges, and Real‑World Solutions

Wave

Since Serverless emerged in 2014, many pioneers have explored the space, and major cloud vendors such as Alibaba, Tencent, Amazon, Baidu, and Huawei have continuously launched their own services to capture a share of the market.

Globally, Serverless continues to gain traction, especially driven by Tencent and Alibaba in China. Compared with other keywords, both Serverless and micro‑services show sustained growth, reflecting a trend toward lightweight, distributed, and maintainable architectures.

Data source: Google Trends

Alibaba Cloud leverages its early‑stage advantage and introduces hybrid scaling (reserved + pay‑as‑you‑go) and prepaid modes, expanding its user base and improving stability, especially during major shopping festivals. In July 2020, Alibaba Function Compute (FC) passed the Trusted Cloud Function certification with perfect scores.

Image from Alibaba Cloud 2020 online summit

Tencent integrates Serverless with its Mini‑Program ecosystem, enabling rapid user growth by offering seamless cloud capabilities to developers.

Image from Tencent Cloud

Marketing and promotion have spurred many enterprises—Alibaba Taobao, Feizhu, Gaode, Kaola, JD, Didi, ByteDance, etc.—to migrate workloads to Serverless, encouraging others to follow.

Beyond large enterprises, small‑ and medium‑sized businesses and individual developers constitute the majority of the tech community, many of whom are eager to try Serverless but lack clear guidance.

Challenges

Software architecture has evolved from C/S and MVC to SOA, monoliths, services, and now fine‑grained micro‑services, demanding high performance and scalability.

Fred Brooks noted this in *The Mythical Man‑Month* (1975).

Is Serverless the silver bullet for balancing development complexity and efficiency?

The CNCF Cloud Native Interactive Landscape shows many infrastructure providers (Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei, Amazon, etc.), but relatively few higher‑level frameworks; notable ones include Serverless Framework and Spring Cloud Function, covering most global scenarios.

Languages that natively support Lambda, such as Node.js and Python, are a perfect fit for FaaS, dominating usage statistics.

Image from Alibaba Cloud technical blog

JVM’s larger memory footprint leads to slower startup, making Java less suitable for FaaS.

Language suitability heavily influences user demographics; front‑end developers mainly work with JavaScript/HTML/CSS and only occasionally touch back‑end code, limiting the growth of the Serverless user base.

Providers aim to satisfy existing users while expanding the market, creating a competitive dilemma.

Choices

To address user‑base challenges, vendors continuously experiment. Recent efforts include:

Meeting diverse user needs across scenarios.

Introducing new technologies to break language constraints.

Alibaba Cloud’s Serverless portfolio has helped tens of thousands of enterprises—Weibo, Shimo Docs, Zuoyebang, Unilever, etc.—migrate workloads across front‑end, mini‑programs, new retail, gaming, online education, and more.

Beyond Function Compute (FC) and SAE, Alibaba offers Serverless Kubernetes, Elastic Container Instance (ECI), and a comprehensive Serverless product family.

Tencent focuses on a seamless, low‑cost experience with one‑click deployment, attracting users through training, Serverless Days, and CloudBase Serverless solutions.

Tencent also released the first domestic Serverless MySQL database and provides custom runtime options and platform solutions.

These varied offerings reflect a race to capture users and build sustainable commercial ecosystems.

Hammer

Large events have proven Serverless can handle massive traffic, but small companies or individual developers often face steep barriers.

Choosing the right solution is difficult; users typically start with familiar platforms and ask:

How do I run an application on Serverless?

Must the application be refactored into functions?

How can I ensure stability after migration?

What is the pricing model?

Common migration uses Custom Runtime with HTTP‑based event handling.

Image from Alibaba Cloud Custom Runtime solution

Cold start latency is a major drawback; container + function startup can take 2–10 seconds, especially for non‑Node.js languages.

Functions typically respond within a few seconds, while full applications start slower.

Pre‑warmed containers can mitigate cold starts but may be more expensive than traditional ECS.

Package size limits (≈50 MB) constrain deployment; Node.js apps stay under 100 MB, but adding front‑end assets can inflate bundles to several hundred megabytes.

Serverless imposes development‑style changes, such as handling file uploads via gateways, leading to higher maintenance costs.

Network isolation and custom container restrictions further complicate migration.

Despite challenges, cost savings are significant; a customer reduced monthly spend from thousands of yuan on ECS to just ¥8 on Serverless.

This affordability especially appeals to students and independent developers.

While Serverless has drawbacks, understanding its fundamentals allows teams to avoid pitfalls and reap financial benefits.

Thus, Serverless can be a highly cost‑effective option for many workloads.

Trend

Front‑end users are splitting into two groups: those seeking no‑code, cloud‑native solutions, and those preferring incremental evolution of existing applications.

Serverless Framework recently updated its YAML configuration to support pure functions and scenario‑specific workloads.

Serverless Framework YAML configuration.

Tencent Cloud Development now uses JSON instead of YAML, but the core concepts remain similar.

{
  "envId": "fx",
  "framework": {
    "plugins": {
      "server": {
        "use": "@cloudbase/framework-plugin-node",
        "inputs": {
          "entry": "./api/index.js",
          "path": "/api",
          "name": "github-stats-api",
          "wrapExpress": true
        }
      },
      "pin": {
        "use": "@cloudbase/framework-plugin-node",
        "inputs": {
          "entry": "./api/pin.js",
          "path": "/api/pin",
          "name": "github-stats-pin",
          "wrapExpress": true
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Full JSON configuration for Tencent Cloud Development.

Alibaba’s template.yml has remained relatively stable over the years.

Serverless Devs, launched at year‑end, shifts tooling toward a managed platform, hinting at future changes.

Tencent now bundles functions, storage, and database resources, offering a strong advantage for mini‑program development.

Vendors continue to address their shortcomings and differentiate through scenario‑specific solutions, which users appreciate.

Developers’ mindset remains stable; with well‑packaged platforms, application‑centric development dominates, treating Serverless containers as traditional servers with added constraints.

Front‑end teams increasingly favor integrated full‑stack development, diverging from original Serverless expectations.

This reflects a retro‑style trend in the domestic market, likely the most readily accepted future direction.

Hope

According to an InfoQ 2019 Serverless report, three primary motivations drive adoption:

Reducing operational costs by eliminating idle server capacity.

Automatic on‑demand scaling to handle traffic spikes.

Offloading server maintenance to cloud providers, allowing developers to focus on code.

While these benefits are attractive, potential pitfalls must be considered before implementation.

Future Serverless solutions should satisfy both function‑and‑application workloads, offering stronger capabilities and keeping Chinese vendors competitive on the global stage.

This article is intended as a thought‑starter and reflects personal opinions only; it does not endorse any specific platform.