# The server is dead, long live the server: Rise of Serverless Computing, Overview of Current State and Future Trends in Research and Industry

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.02888 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02888/

## Key facts

- Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 7 Jun 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Edge Video Analytics: A Survey on Applications, Systems and Enabling Techniques](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15751/) (2022)
- [SMDP-Based Dynamic Batching for Efficient Inference on GPU-Based Platforms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12865/) (2023)
- [Training Heterogeneous Client Models using Knowledge Distillation in Serverless Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.07295/) (2024)
- [Serverless GPU Architecture for Enterprise HR Analytics: A Production-Scale BDaaS Implementation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19689/) (2025)
- [Functionals in the Clouds: An abstract architecture of serverless Cloud-Native Apps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.10362/) (2021)
- [ACE: Towards Application-Centric Edge-Cloud Collaborative Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13061/) (2022)
- [A Review of Deep Reinforcement Learning in Serverless Computing: Function Scheduling and Resource Auto-Scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12839/) (2023)
- [Apodotiko: Enabling Efficient Serverless Federated Learning in Heterogeneous Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14033/) (2024)
- [SERFLOW: A Cross-Service Cost Optimization Framework for SLO-Aware Dynamic ML Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.27182/) (2025)
- [High-Performance Serverless Computing: A Systematic Literature Review on Serverless for HPC, AI, and Big Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.09334/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Serverless computing -- an emerging cloud-native paradigm for the deployment of applications and services -- represents an evolution in cloud application development, programming models, abstractions, and platforms. It promises a real pay-as-you-go billing (with millisecond granularity) with no waste of resources, and lowers the bar for developers by asking them to delegate all their operational complexity and scalability to the cloud provider. Delivering on these promises comes at the expense of restricting functionality. In this article we provide an overview of serverless computing, its evolution, general architecture, key characteristics and uses cases that made it an attractive option for application development. Based on discussions with academics and industry experts during a series of organized serverless computing workshops (WoSC), we also identify the technical challenges and open problems.