In a recent revelation, Werner Vogels, the Chief Technology Officer of Amazon, has provided significant insights into the origins of AWS Lambda, one of the company's flagship services in serverless computing. Speaking about the internal design narrative that launched the project, Vogels details the initial challenges faced by customers who struggled with managing idle EC2 fleets in need of operational tasks such as database writes and file processing.
The document, which Vogels annotates, offers a glimpse into the vision that motivated the development of AWS Lambda, characterised by the notion of allowing users to "easily run any code as an AWS-operated scalable, secure, and reliable cloud service." Vogels reflects on the evolution of Lambda over the past decade, noting that technological advancements have prompted features like 1ms billing granularity and support for functions with 10 GB of memory. "Lambda, driven by the needs of our customers, has evolved quite a bit in the last decade," he stated.
Amazon retains a tradition of crafting internal "press releases" that articulate their forthcoming products. This method compels product creators to present their ideas clearly and fully, supported by data to avert any potential misunderstanding. Jeff Barr, Vice President and Chief Evangelist at AWS, touched upon the service’s conceptual groundwork by recalling early discussions in 2013 about the potential for developers to focus on coding rather than managing infrastructure. "At some point, I recall throwing my arms skyward and indicating that it would be cool to simply toss the code into the air and have the cloud grab, store, and run it," Barr recounted, adding that his colleague Tim Wagner subsequently drafted a proposal for a platform that would realise such ambitions.
Vogels further elaborated on the significance of sharing this historical narrative, underscoring the idea that while thoroughness is critical, Amazon does not strive for perfection. "The goal is to get products into the hands of our customers, watch how they use them, make adjustments and innovate along the way," he noted.
The original narrative, penned a decade ago, stated ambitions to empower mobile backends and introduce scripting capabilities for various AWS services, with Lambda integrated to serve these functions. Marc Brooker, a distinguished engineer at Amazon Web Services, commented on the initial obstacles overlooked during development, particularly concerning latency issues. He pointed out that while AWS has extensively focused on optimally reducing tail latencies for Lambda, median latencies have proven to be of more concern for customers, especially those developing microservices and service-oriented architectures.
Additionally, Barr has identified a notable shift towards the incorporation of composable elements alongside artificial intelligence developments. He predicts that serverless applications are set to increasingly leverage reusable, prebuilt components. "Aided by AI-powered development tools, a lot of new code will focus on connecting existing components together in new and powerful ways," Barr explained, suggesting this evolution will enhance the consistency and reliability across various applications.
The comprehensive details regarding the Lambda PR/FAQ can be accessed through Werner Vogels' website, while the unannotated version remains available in PDF format.
Source: Noah Wire Services