Serverless does not mean the lack of a server, but rather you (or the application) does not know which server is used to provide some functionality to an application. Serverless, therefore, describes an application that depends on some 3rd party app or service that lives in the cloud to provide some logic or functionality to the application.
Let us use the example of a student research portal. Students research a certain topic and create documents in the portal related to what they need to research. They can then load print credits against their profile and print the saved documents they need. After a page is printed, the print credit is deducted from their profile.
While this is a very simple example, I am using it to illustrate the concept of serverless computing. We can split the application up into various components. These are as follows:
- Login authentication
- Purchasing print credits
- Updating...