Why Serverless Is Set to Dominate Cloud Computing in 2021 and Beyond

Industry and Serverless Architecture

In 2021, Serverless architecture gained significant momentum, highlighted by Forrester’s The Forrester Wave™: Function‑As‑A‑Service Platforms, Q1 2021 , which evaluated leading platforms and projected widespread adoption of FaaS as the next cloud computing model after IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.

Key industry milestones include Gartner naming Serverless a top infrastructure trend in 2018, UC Berkeley’s 2019 paper declaring Serverless the default cloud computing paradigm, and CNCF’s 2020 survey showing 31% of organizations using Serverless in production.

1. Industry View of Serverless

Forrester’s 2021 Q1 FaaS report placed Alibaba, Amazon, and Microsoft in the leader quadrant, with Alibaba, Tencent, and Huawei leading among Chinese providers. DataDog reported a 250% increase in Serverless usage, noting that daily function invocations grew 3.5‑fold compared to two years earlier.

Major cloud vendors expanded Serverless capabilities: Alibaba migrated to the Shenlong architecture and launched GPU instances; Tencent introduced Web function types; Huawei advanced FunctionGraph 2.0; AWS added CloudWatch Lambda Insights, container image support, and Graviton2‑based functions.

2. Academic View of Serverless

Since the concept’s introduction in 2012, academic interest has surged. UC Berkeley’s 2018 paper highlighted challenges such as inefficient data processing and limited support for distributed systems, while its 2019 “Cloud Programming Simplified” forecasted Serverless becoming the default computing model.

2021 saw a rise in research on cold‑start optimization, image acceleration, scheduling, and caching, with notable papers like “FaaSNet” (USENIX ATC) proposing a scalable container runtime middleware, and “Faa$T” introducing an auto‑scaling cache for Serverless applications.

3. Vendor‑Driven Developments

Cloud providers focused on performance, container integration, observability, and event ecosystems. AWS enhanced EventBridge, SQS, and MSK integrations; Alibaba added nearly a hundred event sources via EventBridge; and all major vendors improved support for custom runtimes and containers.

4. Community‑Driven Growth

The open‑source ecosystem flourished with tools like Serverless Devs 2.0, Serverless Framework, and various cloud‑agnostic frameworks (Midway FaaS, Malagu, FaasJS). New compute engines such as Baidu’s EasyFaaS entered the scene, and community events (Serverless Days, meetups) expanded across cities and universities.

Conclusion

Serverless is emerging as the primary cloud computing model for the next decade, driven by both vendor innovation and vibrant community contributions. Its evolution—from early FaaS offerings to comprehensive BaaS services—promises to simplify development, accelerate time‑to‑market, and reshape cloud architecture.