Serverless computing is gaining a lot of momentum these days. Some of us may confuse serverless computing with peer to peer networking model.
But, in reality, serverless computing is an entirely different concept. It offers the vendors with the function as a service platform (FaaS), which performs application execution without storing data.
One of the key reasons behind continual growth in serverless computing is its ability to work without interfering or hampering your productivity.
Amazon was the first FaaS public cloud service provider when it launched the AWS Lambda back in 2014.
We will be looking at some of the top use cases of AWS Lambda across industries like entertainment, gaming, technology, and media.
A Look at Some of the Popular AWS Lambda Use Cases
AWS Lambda Use Cases in Entertainment
Netflix, the leading OTT platform, delivers content to more than 125 million of its users. Netflix has partnered with AWS cloud services, and it helps them to scale the resources as and when required.
AWS Lambda is used by Netflix to process the videos in a streamlined manner and fasten up the process of data processing.
Another key area, where Amazon Lambda proves to be useful is when Netflix wants to back up its data. Amazon Lambda processes the content and makes the decisions on whether the file needs a backup.
And if the file is already backed up, then AWS Lamba checks and processes whether the modifications are required in the existing backups.
Major League Baseball is not just popular amongst sports enthusiasts but across the entire world.
MLBAM is a media wing of MLB, and it planned on improving the audience experience by introducing a real-time player tracking system with which MLBAM can display the insights in real-time.
At first, MLB wanted to implement an on-premise IT solution. But, as the MLB season takes place only for about six months, the majority of its resources would have stayed idle during the off-season period.
Also, as per the schedule, the frequency of the number of matches per day varies from 1-2 to even 12-15 matches per day. It was really difficult to build a system that could cater to such flexibility.
Hence MLBAM decided to partner with AWS for this project. Furthermore, MLBAM decided to go for serverless computing platforms with AWS Lambda to easily detect, process, and respond to the queries.
AWS Lambda also offered scalability that could help MLBAM to save the operational costs and increase or decrease the use of systems based on the number of matches.
Also, with AWS Lambda, MLBAM can now display the valuable insights within the 20 seconds of play.
Square Enix is one of the market leaders in the gaming industry. Its panache for unique user experience is widely known across the globe.
Square Enix's one of the most famous games Dragon Quest allows users to take screenshots after the completion of a task or special achievements, etc.
These screenshots are processed, and the task uses a lot of memory. Generally, these screenshots are around 200-300 per minute, but there are spikes during festive seasons or long holidays, and the number goes as high as 6000 images per minute.
Now to solve this problem with a dedicated On-premise solution is not advised since spikes are seasonal, and the investment made will be permanent.
In order to overcome this problem, Square Enix came up with a solution to moving to the cloud with AWS.
AWS Lambda allowed the Square Enix to eliminate the need to process the images on its end, and it also allowed the company to scale up or down at whatever level it wanted.
Palringo is a UK-based gaming app development company that focuses on bringing together people from less developed countries. Its main focus is on delivering the content that is based on a user’s demands.
As mobile-based technology is evolving with every passing day, it's unimaginable for a mobile app development company to stay stagnant.
With the growth in demand, the company faced outage and bottlenecking challenges. Solving these issues was time-consuming, and it was getting really tough for them to work more on the development part.
They decided to partner with AWS to eliminate these issues.
Palringo was benefitted with this alliance as they could spend more time on DevOps and continuous delivery. It has also helped to improve the productivity and efficiency of the Palringo employees remarkably.
Benchling, headquartered in San Francisco, is a software company that provides life science solutions to its clients.
Benchling’s CRISPR is a platform used by scientists across the world to screen drug targets and build disease models.
But since this is a time-sensitive task, it becomes really essential that the results displayed are pretty quick.
But, Benchling faced difficulty in this time criteria with its previous vendor as it took almost 30 seconds, which were considered to be too slow.
That's when it decided to partner up AWS services. And they decided to go for serverless computing with AWS Lambda, and it turned out to be an amazing option for them.
The scientists could cut down the search time by 90% and helped the scientists to understand the results faster.
Autodesk, headquartered in California, US, is a software company that creates software for engineering, architecture, and media industries.
Autodesk started to use AWS services to decrease data-center dependability. But this process started becoming time-consuming as the adoption to AWS began increasing.
To solve this problem, the Autodesk IT team decided to use an automated system that can create new AWS accounts and update the old ones with minimal human interventions.
They decided to call that project "Tailor," and it was designed with a serverless architecture. The tailor uses different AWS services, and the system to automate these tasks is AWS Lambda.
The time to execute the request, process, and successfully start the service was significantly improved with AWS Lambda, and the benefits of adopting AWS did not end just there.
With AWS Lambda, Autodesk could also save operational costs significantly and improve security as well.
The Guardian is one of England's most-read newspapers, and its online paper subscription is also quite popular.
But, as the number of online customers started to grow, it was getting difficult to manage the user subscriptions for the newspaper.
The subscription plans vary from one customer to another, and it becomes harder to keep track of all the different subscriptions with on-premise systems.
Guardian News Media (GNM) had been using AWS for a long time, and the GNM decided to use AWS Step Function to simplify the database and run the tasks in a sequential manner.
AWS Lambda can reduce the number of iteration needed in the Amazon Step Functions.
With the help of AWS Lambda, Guardian could manage multiple systems with lesser time and higher efficiency.
Seattle Times is one of the most renowned newspapers across the Pacific Northwest, and it has a huge online subscriber base.
The newspaper had been maintaining an in-house IT infrastructure until some time back.
Then, to reduce the additional costs, it decided to go for the third party hosts for IT infrastructure.
But, after some time, the IT team came to understand that with the switch to third-party hosting, they had compromised the flexibility and scalability.
That's when they decided to partner with AWS services like Amazon EC2. The migration to Amazon EC2 was seamless, and AWS Lambda helped the newspaper in these transitions.
The processing ability of AWS Lambda is considered to be one of the key aspects of the Seattle Times' impeccable on-time subscription delivery.
Key Takeaways:
Amazon Lambda can help you to:
- Improve processing speed.
- Save time.
- Reduce the dependability on the third-party hosting.
- Scale the processes as per the need.
- Reduce IT costs.
- Focus more on product development aspects.
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