Serverless or Function as a Service is one of the hottest topics these days. But what is ‘serverless computing’ and who is it for? Can it replace the existing models? These are some of the many questions the CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation) is attempting to answer in a paper drafted by the CNCF Serverless Working Group.

“Serverless is a natural evolution of cloud-native computing. The CNCF is advancing serverless adoption through collaboration and community-driven initiatives that will enable interoperability,” said Chris Aniszczyk, COO, CNCF.

According to the whitepaper, “Serverless computing refers to the concept of building and running applications that do not require server management. It describes a finer-grained deployment model where applications, bundled as one or more functions, are uploaded to a platform and then executed, scaled, and billed in response to the exact demand needed at the moment.”

Being a new technology, there is a lot of work to be done for the healthy growth of serverless ecosystem. The CNCF has recognized its role in the space and attempting to address those needs. The CNCF will start a drive to encourage more serverless technology vendors and open source developers to join the CNCF. It will also look at ways to foster an open ecosystem by establishing interoperable APIs, ensuring interoperable implementations with vendor commitments and open source tools.

CNCF is a Linux Foundation Collaborative project that was created to foster innovation in the cloud native space. Kubernetes was its anchor project.

You can read the whitepaper on GitHub.