Serverless does not mean the lack of a server, but rather you (or the application) does not know which server is used to provide some functionality to an application. Serverless, therefore, describes an application that depends on some 3rd party app or service that lives in the cloud to provide some logic or functionality to the application.

Let us use the example of a student research portal. Students research a certain topic and create documents in the portal related to what they need to research. They can then load print credits against their profile and print the saved documents they need. After a page is printed, the print credit is deducted from their profile.

While this is a very simple example, I am using it to illustrate the concept of serverless computing. We can split the application up into various components. These are as follows:

1. Login authentication
2. Purchasing print credits
3. Updating remaining print credits
4. Printing documents

Why write the code to provide login authentication in your application when there are already third-party services out there that do just that? Similarly, why write code to print documents when there are services that provide quite rich functionality you can just consume in your application? Anything specific such as the purchasing and loading of student print credits, can be created using an Azure Function. The topic of serverless computing is broad and still in its infancy. There is much to learn and experience. Let's take the first steps and explore what benefits this can have for developers.