AWS has introduced Lambda in preview. Developers upload a function, give it access to the necessary AWS resources and connect it to events instead of launching an EC2 server for the task.
At launch, those events include changes to S3 objects, Kinesis streams and DynamoDB tables. The platform handles the compute environment and scaling behind each invocation.
Where it could help
- Process an image after an upload to S3.
- React to changes in application data.
- Run a short task without keeping a worker machine running all month.
The preview is a new execution model rather than a replacement for every server. Long-running processes, runtime support and the services called by a function still affect the design and its eventual bill.