From Function-as-a-Service to the Edge: A Meta-synthesis of Serverless Computing Research, Platforms, and Open Challenges
Keywords:
Cloud computing, Cold start, Edge computing, Function-as-a-Service (FaaS), Serverless computing, Vendor lock-inAbstract
Serverless computing has moved from an experimental deployment style to a mainstream option for building cloud-native applications, shifting responsibility for provisioning, scaling, and fault tolerance from the developer to the platform. This paper synthesizes findings from two large-scale systematic reviews of the serverless computing literature, one spanning 164 papers and another spanning 275 papers published between 2016 and 2020, together with supporting studies on architecture, platform performance, and application domains, to build a consolidated picture of the field. The synthesis indicates that research attention has concentrated heavily on performance engineering, programming frameworks, and resource management, while comparatively less work addresses benchmarking standardization, resource-aware pricing, and privacy protection for Internet-of-Things deployments. Commercial platforms such as AWS Lambda, Microsoft Azure Functions, and Google Cloud Functions dominate industry adoption, while open-source, container-based alternatives offer greater portability at the cost of additional operational overhead. The review concludes that closing these specific gaps rather than further validating already well-studied performance claims represents the most productive direction for near-term serverless computing research.
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