Realm Brings Serverless Computing to Mobile Applications

Most mobile computing applications deployed in the enterprise make use of a local database to provide a richer end-user experience. But with the rise of serverless computing frameworks, developers of those applications now have another option.

Realm, a provider of a mobile application development platform for building interactive applications, announced today it is making available a serverless computing framework option as an alternative to invoking a local database.

Paul Kopacki, chief marketing officer for Realm, says serverless computing frameworks lend themselves better to certain types of event-driven application architectures. Of course, there are still servers involved. A serverless computing framework essentially eliminates the need for developers to be aware of their existence. Additional compute and storage resources are dynamically made available as needed.

“It means developers no longer have to spend time on non-differentiated tasks,” says Kopacki.

It’s still early days as far as serverless computing is concerned. Most developers have not begun yet to master the functional approach to programming they require. But over time, serverless computing frameworks will become yet another major style of computing. The major challenge IT organizations will face going forward is figuring out what style of architecture best fits any given application use case.