PRO+ Premium Content/Modern Stack

Interest in serverless computing is sky high, but developers and IT pros should recalibrate their expectations. It's common for new technologies to follow a similar path when it comes to awareness and excitement. Gartner calls this phenomenon a hype cycle and even charts technology trends as they move from the "peak of inflated expectations" through the "trough of disillusionment" and ultimately onto the "plateau of productivity." Gartner's 2017 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies put serverless PaaS on an upward trend, still not quite at peak hype. Judging by the buzz at recent conferences, it's hard to imagine any technology as overhyped as serverless computing is right now. Serverless-related sessions at May's Red Hat Summit in San Francisco were packed. Rich Sharples, senior director of product management at Red Hat, fielded questions about the benefits of serverless, including as a strategy to modernize mainframe applications. Several of these questions exemplified inflated expectations, but also a misunderstanding of the ...