Amazon Introduces AWS Lambda for Scaleable Event-Driven Cloud Computing

Amazon has demoed a new cloud computing service called AWS Lambda, at the AWS re:Invent 2014 conference this year in Las Vegas, which can run code in response to specific events and automatically manage the resources needed to do so. This could become a very easy way to create back-end services and data triggers to quickly respond to new requests or user activity like uploading an image or clicking on a link. AWS Lambda can launch code modules within milliseconds of an event occurrence and the billing is metered in increments of 100 milliseconds making it a fairly cost-effective and highly scaleable infrastructure. This should all be welcome news for developers using the Amazon Cloud where manually managing computing resources, or even autoscaling configurations, can prove difficult and expensive. AWS Lambda could also become a trigger for the future Internet Of Things where complex processes could be launched on-demand in response to real-time events like a change in temperature or sun light.

AWS Lambda

The AWS Lambda introduction says:

The code you run on AWS Lambda is called a “Lambda function.” After you create your Lambda function it is always ready to run as soon as it is triggered, similar to a formula in a spreadsheet. Each function includes your code as well as some associated configuration information, including the function name and resource requirements. Lambda functions are “stateless,” with no affinity to the underlying infrastructure, so that Lambda can rapidly launch as many copies of the function as needed to scale to the rate of incoming events.

You can also sign up for a preview to AWS Lambda here.