AWS’s New Lambda Service Automates Compute Resources

Chris Preimesberger,

AWS-oriented developers will be able to speed along their work a lot more when they get their hands on the new free tools

Amazon Web Services has brought some lubrication to cloud software development with a new compute service that will save time and repetitive work for developers by automating compute resources for them.

AWS Lambda also runs code automatically in response to events, making it easier for developers to build, test and manage cloud applications that need to respond quickly to new information. Virtually every new enterprise cloud application now falls into that category.

The company also launched Amazon EC2 Container Service, a highly scalable, high-performance container management service that AWS claims makes it easier to run and manage distributed applications using Docker containers in its cloud.

The Seattle-based Web services giant made the announcements at its re:Invent 2014 conference at the Venetian in Las Vegas.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)Will Speed Up Development of Apps for AWS

Overall, it was a good day for AWS-oriented developers, who should be able to speed along their work a lot more when they get their hands on these new free tools.

“Lambda represents the evolution of infrastructure management. Developers can quickly and cost-effectively write applications that respond immediately to changes in data or the environment,” AWS Vice-President and Chief Technical Officer Werner Vogels said in the keynote introducing the new service.

“Whereas now developers have to deal with complex monitoring, gaps, oversights, overload and opacity, Lambda offers events describing infrastructure changes and demands to go with rules triggered to adapt to traffic and the fabric.

“Users write simple JavaScript code to take action on an event and upload it to AWS Lambda. It starts running code within milliseconds of an event such as an image upload, in-app activity, website click, or output from a connected device, Vogels said.

Developers can also use AWS Lambda to create new back-end services where compute resources are automatically triggered based on custom requests.

Pay Only for Requests Served

Users pay only for the requests served and compute time required to run their code. AWS Lambda charges for compute time in increments of 100 milliseconds, making it cost-effective and easy to scale apps to whatever number of requests are required.

Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt, who gave a testimonial during the keynote, said that for his company Lambda provides easier media transcoding and faster monitoring, from disaster recovery to improved security and compliance.

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Originally published on eWeek.