DigitalOcean Launches Serverless Product

DigitalOcean Launches Serverless Functions Based on Nimbella

Following its acquisition of Nimbella last year, DigitalOcean has unveiled a new offering: DigitalOcean Functions. This feature leverages the technology originally developed by Nimbella, signaling a significant move into the serverless computing space.

Addressing Developer Demand

DigitalOcean has built a reputation for providing cost-effective cloud infrastructure, attracting a large developer base. According to Gabe Monroy, DigitalOcean’s chief product officer, the introduction of serverless functionality is a direct response to customer requests.

“The acquisition of Nimbella was strategically aimed at integrating serverless capabilities into our platform,” Monroy stated. “Our customers have consistently requested more serverless options, driven by a desire to deploy code directly to the cloud without infrastructure management concerns.”

The Core of Serverless Computing

Serverless computing allows developers to focus solely on code creation, abstracting away the complexities of infrastructure provisioning. While servers remain essential, the cloud provider dynamically allocates and manages the necessary resources for function execution.

A Framework for Serverless Development

The newly launched Functions feature provides developers with a programming framework specifically designed for building serverless applications. Initially, the focus is on Jamstack APIs, offering a streamlined entry point for developers new to serverless programming.

“The event-driven nature of serverless can present a learning curve,” Monroy explained. “APIs and HTTP-based use cases also operate on an event-driven model, making them an ideal starting point as developers can apply existing skills without needing to master entirely new programming paradigms.”

Flexibility and Integration

DigitalOcean emphasizes that serverless functions aren't intended to replace existing application architectures. Instead, they can be integrated alongside traditional containerized applications.

“Developers can continue to run applications built with frameworks like Django or Ruby on Rails within containers on our platform,” Monroy clarified. “They can then enhance these applications with function-oriented APIs, all while utilizing the same data stores.”

Simplified Pricing Model

Cost management is a crucial consideration with automated provisioning. DigitalOcean has addressed this by implementing a simplified pricing structure.

“We’ve designed our pricing to be more straightforward, excluding requests and invocations from the calculation,” Monroy noted. “This approach aims to provide users with greater clarity and predictability in their cloud spending.”