Blend360 How-To Series: Serverless Computing with Adobe IO Runtime

Are your developers and IT departments bogged down with server maintenance tasks when deploying code? Does your IT department constantly have to upgrade or purchase new servers to keep up with traffic? It might be time to look into Adobe IO Runtime, Adobe’s new serverless computing platform.

What is serverless computing? Doesn’t there always have to be a server to run code?

In short, yes and no. Serverless computing relies on databases and cloud server networks. Your project’s code doesn’t live on a dedicated server in the sense of traditional application or web development. Instead, it’s stored in a database and retrieved at time of initialization, then run in an isolated container within a cloud server network.

Why is going serverless beneficial to traditional dedicated server development?

First, it’s all about saving resources and un-complicating code deployment in serverless computing. There’s no longer a cost associated with a dedicated server and IT department resources for implementing your application. Developers can focus on writing and deploying code, not on server configurations and resource issues.

Second, the resources dedicated to your application code scale as needed! Adobe IO Runtime can spin up as many containers as necessary to serve your application in whatever capacity you need. Code can be configured to leverage up to 4GB of memory in a single invocation. Additionally, timeout, concurrency and input parameters per Adobe IO Runtime action providing the possibility of each application possessing a unique runtime configuration.

How does Adobe IO Runtime work?

When you deploy code to Adobe IO Runtime, it is called an “action”. Creating your first action in Adobe IO Runtime is a very simple process:

1. Set up your local machine with the OpenWhisk or AdobeIO CLI.
2. Create an authorization file on your local machine with your Adobe IO Runtime credentials
3. Write some Node.js code
4. Create an Adobe IO Runtime action via the OpenWhisk or AdobeIO CLI.

Watch the video below to see just how easy setting up your first Adobe IO Runtime action is!

A little over 7 minutes is all it took for me to configure the environment, write some code and create an Adobe IO Runtime action! Obviously, my example is very barebones, but it’s easy to see how leveraging Adobe IO Runtime can cut down on development resources and time-to-deployment for applications.

At BLEND360, we have been leveraging Adobe IO Runtime with clients to:

1. Create public API endpoints for data submission,
2. Integrate with other Adobe products like Analytics and Marketo Engage with external databases for data enhancement
3. Connect with 3rd-party APIs to collect, manipulate and transfer data,
4. Write simple day-to-day applications to leverage internally within our company.
5. Many more applications to come!

If you are in need of data or API integrations, Adobe or not, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We will be more than happy to meet with you and figure out if there is a way for BLEND360 to help meet your goals!

At BLEND360, we BLEND IN, so clients STAND OUT.

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