The Case for Event-Driven Infrastructure

When it comes to building up your network’s infrastructure, it’s much more than just the servers, containers, and services. It’s about micro functions triggered by certain events; an event-driven, kind of infrastructure. Though we haven’t seen really anything like this in the past, it won’t be long before we see a lot more of it.

The first time we saw event-driven infrastructure was with Amazon Web Services. They provided users with a unique service feature called AWS Lambda. AWS Lambda allows developers to customize and set up specific functions that would run only when a certain event takes place.

Sounds genius, right? Read on to learn more:

What is Event-Driven Infrastructure?

Event-driven infrastructure, like what we saw with AWS Lambda, gave users the ability to move beyond ordinary servers for specific processes. It moved the old server to a model where the entire operation itself was the unit of measure. It worked by a set of triggers, that forced the service to perform a function at a certain moment. The rest of the time, the server sat idle. Developers would only then pay for the service when those functions, activated by those triggers, were running. Make sense?

Amazon Web Services isn’t the only company working on a server model like this. Recently, other cloud vendors like Google, Microsoft, and IBM, who recently released its version, called “Whisk,” are also joining the scene. Microsoft’s version is being offered through its Azure platform. And, you can see what Google has in store by looking at its alpha product called “Google Cloud Functions.” There hasn’t been much about the product yet, but according to Google, it’s “a lightweight, event-based, asynchronous compute solution that allows you to create small, single-purpose functions that respond to cloud events without the need to manage a server or a runtime environment.”

Tying This New Infrastructure with Costs

Though all the major cloud vendors are essentially competing for the best event-driven infrastructure on the market, it’s about much more than that. The fact that we’re even seeing these kind of the developments is exciting news for the entire IT world, and everyone involved. These well-known vendors, as well as startups like iron.io, understand the importance of these strong, unique, and reliable servers. It’s not about the standard reality of modern applications and organizational requirements anymore. It’s just as much about storage, network, and constant improvement.

That being said, even with an event-driven infrastructure, the applications that an organization runs are heavily defined by the outcome of those apps. Therefore, being able to tie the costs with the infrastructure itself is the ultimate way to save and reach that desired outcome. And, it’s easy to tie this new infrastructure to costs when money is only being spent on what’s running when, and whether or not that desired outcome is reached. No more wasting time or money.

The Future of Event-Driven Infrastructure

These new, event-driven solutions are a result of IT people taking a different approach to building applications with a service-based view. These modern applications tie together a variety of individual services to create the application as a whole. When vendors can deliver these micro-services solely based on events, it’s just a more natural and sensible way of going about it. These are entirely new ways for vendors to build their applications and deliver a solid, unique infrastructure that users will love.

Though event-driven infrastructure is just getting it started, it shouldn’t be too long til we see it taking over the cloud vendor industry. Keep your eye out, because once it’s out there for good, you’re going to want to get your hands on it!