The serverless movement has enabled innovation at a range of levels. By putting infrastructure responsibilities in the hands of cloud computing providers, serverless applications enable builders to focus primarily on product end goals and avoid the often tedious work of application development. Some argue serverless is such a revolutionary tool that it could foster a new startup ecosystem.

The simplicity of automated serverless tech provides huge benefits to businesses looking for cloud solutions, but its wide accessibility is also creating unprecedented opportunities for users who might not otherwise have the ability to utilize virtual tools.

“Technologies like serverless really lower the barrier to entry for people who are trying to get involved,” said Andrea Passwater (pictured), lead content strategist at Serverless Inc. “It’s something really exciting that not a lot of people are talking about.”

Passwater sat down with Stu Miniman (@stu), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the ServerlessConf event in San Francisco.

As a tech professional with an unconventional path to her current role at Serverless, Passwater is bringing a unique perspective to the work of encouraging cloud literacy for all through the opportunity of serverless tech.

This week, theCUBE spotlights Andrea Passwater in our Women in Tech feature.

Streamlined application development

Serverless Inc. was designed with a mission of simplicity from the outset when its founder and Chief Executive Officer Austen Collins built the original framework as a foundation from which to launch his own side projects as an AWS Community Hero. The platform’s AWS Lambda-powered open-source framework quickly caught on with developers eager to leverage its ease of use.

“We have somewhere close to 30,000 GitHub stars, and this whole serverless movement started to build up around AWS Lambda. All of the major cloud providers started launching their own serverless solutions,” Passwater said.

With the streamlined, automated development process it provides, serverless tech’s popularity is no mystery. Complex provisioning and deployment is removed from the developer side, leaving only the functional coding and finished product. The remarkable ease-of-use it enables is inspiring an increasing number of less-experienced developers to engage with application building.

“AWS Lambda makes it so much easier to be able to code something and publicly host it. You don’t have to worry about setting up your servers and all of that stuff, and it also makes it a lot cheaper to get started,” Passwater said.

Creating a culture of accessibility

Passwater’s own journey to Serverless Inc. was motivated by the company’s culture of accessibility, specifically in the diversity of professional backgrounds it welcomes. “One of the biggest appeals to me about Serverless as a company was how passionate everyone there was about the fact that you didn’t need to have an engineering background to be able to develop software,” she said.

The organization currently boasts a team of employees with backgrounds in film, fashion and other industries that break the tech mold and contribute to an overall richer diversity of thought. “I have a pretty non-traditional background for someone who’s at a developer tools company. I’ve done things all over the map,” Passwater said.

As the team’s content strategist, Passwater works primarily in writing for the company’s newsletter, blog and social media, but she also leverages the tools at her disposal toward growth hacking in her overall marketing strategy. With its low overhead and quick implementation, Passwater has been able to easily utilize serverless applications in automating lead generation, sales campaigns, analytics, and even Slack bots to remind co-workers of project deadlines.

“I was able to deploy fully working applications without even having to code that much,” she said.

Automation is power

With minimal coding experience, Passwater has been able to create applications that successfully automate work and maximize productivity, but her real interest in serverless is its wider implications as an instrument of change in the market at large. She’s confident AWS Lambda’s simplicity could be put toward more aspects of work, from small side projects to larger hackathons, without requiring a full-time commitment from beginner developers.

“The Serverless framework makes it so you don’t even have to understand AWS. You can leverage the power of not having to administer your own servers and also not have to understand cloud formation. You can just write a few lines of code and get it done,” she said.

To prove its ease and efficacy, Passwater made an example of herself by tutorializing her first attempt at application development in her blog post “I just deployed a serverless app  — and I can’t code. Here’s how I did it.”

“Hey there developer friends! I somehow just managed to deploy a real, working application. But heads up  —  I am not one of you,” she writes. “As I have discovered, AWS Lambda and the Serverless Framework make it really not that hard to deploy.” According to the tutorial, the entire process from development to deployment took Passwater “maybe an hour.”

Outside of the virtual world, Passwater is further challenging barriers to entry by promoting a community of women in tech through her Women Who Serverless happy hours.

“One thing a lot of women in the tech industry can’t help but notice is that it’s pretty male dominated, and that makes it really important to try and create community and bring more women in — make it feel like it’s a really safe, fun place for women to be,” she said.

For those interested in developing with serverless tools, Passwater advises grounding work in a foundation of utility. “It’s really important whenever you take on any side project [to decide] why it matters to you. For me, that reason is I don’t have a lot of time. Life is short,” she said.

Passwater assures that everyone can benefit from engaging in the tech, and she encourages new users to automate the mundane tasks that inhibit more creative work. “Automation is power,” she writes in her tutorial blog.

“There are lots of things I do at work, just like everyone, that are so routine, and those are perfect candidates for automation. Anytime you have something in your life that you’ll be really motivated to never have to do again, it’s a great reason to want to learn,” Passwater concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the ServerlessConf event.

Photo: SiliconANGLE