Even as many companies are still getting the hang of containers (a virtualized method for running distributed applications), vendors touting newfangled serverless computing jostle for attention. Luckily, even developers clueless about serverless can start building applications with it thanks to its bustling community, according to Linda Nichols (pictured), Cloud Enablement Leader, Cloudreach Europe Ltd.

“When new people come on the scene and they say, ‘What is this?’ people in the community are like, ‘We don’t really know either — it changes everyday,'” Nichols said in an interview at the ServerlessConf event in New York City. She spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio.

The definition of serverless will often shape-shift from one speaker, conference or company to the next, according to Nichols. Indeed her own concept of serverless computing continues to evolve as she learns. This goes to show how lively and fast-moving the community around serverless has become, she explained.

Fast and cheap wins the race at startups and enterprises

To compensate for the relative disarray, serverless computing has much to recommend it. It’s fast and cheap — both crucial for successful operations within startups. “They don’t have the funding to be having an entire development team, and now they can bring in one or two people, and they can get something written and deployed really quickly,” she said. This model is also suited to prototyping and nonprofit organizations, Nichols added.

And don’t forget established enterprises. Cloudreach works with companies moving from on-premises data centers to cloud. Serverless computing can save these companies money and take a lot of bulk and complexity out of running apps in the cloud, according to Nichols.

“That’s sort of where my team comes into play … where we work with app modernization — taking the software apps that are now in the cloud and helping to break apart monoliths and modernize thee apps using serverless,” she said.

Nichols is hopeful that many serverless features will become increasingly standardized in the future.

The websites for Amazon Web Services Inc. Lambda and A Cloud Guru Ltd offer tutorials and other intel for those just wading into serverless, Nichols 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