October 10, 2017 | Written by: Rodric Rabbah
Categorized: Compute Services | DevOps | Hybrid Deployments | Internet of Things | Open Source
Share this post:
Functions-as-a-Service (FaaS) bring to the cloud a set of properties that are central to the serverless computing promise: little to no concern about infrastructure operations, auto provisioning and auto scaling, and pay-per-use with zero cost for idle time. While these benefits are driving the growth of FaaS, developers are quickly realizing they need a better programming approach to build serverless applications, including:
The IBM Research team which previously built the platform that became Apache OpenWhisk is now previewing two new capabilities for serverless computing: Composer available on GitHub, and the functions shell available on NPM.
Composer is a new programming model from for composing IBM Cloud Functions, built on Apache OpenWhisk. Composer extends Functions and sequences with more powerful control flow and automatic state management. With it, developers can build even more serverless applications including using it for IoT, workflow orchestration, conversation services, and devops automation, to name a few examples.
composer.sequence( // programmatic composition
‘currentTemperature’, // call cloud function or API
composer.if( // conditional control flow
result => result.temp < 60, // mix inline JavaScript
‘turnOnHeat’) // interface to 3rd party services
)
Composer helps you express cloud-native apps that are serverless by construction: scale automatically, and pay as you go and not for idle time.
Use the new functions shell to program compositions for IBM Cloud Functions. The shell supports incremental, iterative, and local development of serverless apps; it allows you to use your favorite text editor and readily validate your compositions with locally accessible visualizations, and deploy and run your programs in the cloud all from the same local environment.
We’re at Serverless Conf NY this week demonstrating these previews. You can try them out on the IBM Cloud.
Our clients tell us SAP applications are central to their success and strategy for cloud, with a deadline to refresh the business processes and move to SAP S/4HANA by 2025. Now is the time to assess, plan and execute the journey to cloud and SAP S/4HANA
I’m pleased to announce the latest version of IBM Cloud Developer Tools CLI, which contains some exciting new features.
Are you a Cloud Foundry user? If so, here's your opportunity to influence the future of Cloud Foundry with the 2019 user survey.
