By Jason McGee 2 min read
April 18, 2023

How IBM is enabling Serverless 2.0.

For years, a topic of conversation at KubeCon has been the developers’ complicated relationship with Kubernetes. To understand their concerns, think about driving a car. You want to be able to drive the car without worrying about the engine under the hood, and many developers felt the same way about Kubernetes. They were spending too much time worrying about the underlying infrastructure. What makes the problem worse is that developers want to deploy different types of workloads on Kubernetes, including containerized applications, functions for event-driven workloads or batch jobs. At IBM, we realized that all these scenarios should be addressed by a single serverless platform, based on open-source technologies.

Where we started: Serverless 1.0

In 2021, IBM announced IBM Cloud Code Engine to help developers in any industry build, deploy and scale applications in seconds, while only paying when code is running. Code Engine was made available as a fully managed, serverless offering on IBM Cloud, the industry’s most secure and open cloud for business. This was the industry’s introduction to Serverless 1.0, which was focused on enabling the implementation of endpoints (REST APIs, web apps, etc.).

While Serverless 1.0 offered many benefits to developers, only a small percentage of applications were able to run in serverless function. In particular, it didn’t account for heavy-duty computational applications, processing large workloads or analyzing data. 

Where we are going: Making serverless the default, rather than the exception 

IBM Cloud Code Engine has been focused on enabling the next era of serverless: Serverless 2.0. We saw this first emerge with containers, as serverless is now the de facto standard for packaging applications. Developers want an infrastructure where cloud users can run containers without worrying about ownership and management of the computing infrastructure or Kubernetes cluster on which they are running. With IBM Cloud Code Engine serverless computing, IBM deploys, manages and autoscales our clients’ cluster. The serverless option enhances overall productivity and decreases time to deployment—a win/win for deployers.

Recently, IBM is taking the serverless approach to more complex offerings, such as high-performance computing (HPC). While the industry has long understood the benefits of HPC for running massive simulations (which is especially critical for sectors like financial services that need to continuously assess risk), enterprises were spending considerable amounts on hardware to support their computing needs. With a serverless architecture, IBM clients can cut out the hardware costs and work on an execution-based pricing model where they are only paying for the services they need.

Why IBM Cloud Code Engine? 

IBM Cloud Code Engine is a fully managed serverless platform. It allows our clients to deploy and run almost any workload, whether it’s source code, containers, batch jobs or event-driven functions.

Learn more about IBM Cloud Code Engine.

Meet us at KubeCon

The IBM booth at KubeCon (located in the middle of Solutions Showcase Hall between the two food areas) will be the best place to meet and talk to IBMers. You can also view and register for all the IBM sessions at KubeCon.

Categories

Cloud
Jason McGee
IBM Fellow, VP, and CTO

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