Here's my experience. Some features are extremely good as Microservices. And I wanted to use it. But I don't. Why?
1. Setting up a "Microservices" architecture itself is a convoluted process. If you're not a Netflix or Amazon that will run hundreds of microservices, the up-front cost and time is NOT at all worth it. I would rather just run an app on Digitalocean.
2. IF I decided to bypass step 1 and just use existing vendors like AWS, Google, Microsoft, etc., first I don't feel good about it because I know it's in each vendor's best interest to implement lockin, which conflicts with my own interest.
3. Lastly, none of the existing cloud function vendors have good user experience. AWS Lambda, Google cloud functions, etc. all require you to go through all the authentication related stuff before running a simple function, not to mention all the constraints that come with "function based paradigm". Again, definitely not worth it unless you're trying to run hundreds of these functions.
I think part 3 is critical, because I was willing to ignore part 1 and 2, as long as I could get my function up and running really easily. But none of the vendors make it easy. Sure, there are frameworks that let you do that like Apex and Serverless, but those also require setup. I would rather just run a DigitalOcean server for $5 which by the way can run multiple of those services as a regular server, without me having to spend time dealing with the complexities of function servers.
I thought about how this could be improved. Sure there can be some "Heroku for functions" SaaS, but nobody is excited about building SaaS startups nowadays because they know they can't compete with large vendors in the very long run. (Unless you're comfortable with just building a lifestyle business, which is totally fine, but I personally won't rely on a lifestyle business SaaS)
The only way this can be improved is if each root vendors like Amazon, MS, and Google actually implemented better UI, but none of them are really focused on this since the reason they're doing this business in the first place is not for consumers but to make sure they have leverage in this space. (If AWS dominated 90%+ of this market, the rest of the companies will be in a great risk in the long run)
1. Setting up a "Microservices" architecture itself is a convoluted process. If you're not a Netflix or Amazon that will run hundreds of microservices, the up-front cost and time is NOT at all worth it. I would rather just run an app on Digitalocean.
2. IF I decided to bypass step 1 and just use existing vendors like AWS, Google, Microsoft, etc., first I don't feel good about it because I know it's in each vendor's best interest to implement lockin, which conflicts with my own interest.
3. Lastly, none of the existing cloud function vendors have good user experience. AWS Lambda, Google cloud functions, etc. all require you to go through all the authentication related stuff before running a simple function, not to mention all the constraints that come with "function based paradigm". Again, definitely not worth it unless you're trying to run hundreds of these functions.
I think part 3 is critical, because I was willing to ignore part 1 and 2, as long as I could get my function up and running really easily. But none of the vendors make it easy. Sure, there are frameworks that let you do that like Apex and Serverless, but those also require setup. I would rather just run a DigitalOcean server for $5 which by the way can run multiple of those services as a regular server, without me having to spend time dealing with the complexities of function servers.
I thought about how this could be improved. Sure there can be some "Heroku for functions" SaaS, but nobody is excited about building SaaS startups nowadays because they know they can't compete with large vendors in the very long run. (Unless you're comfortable with just building a lifestyle business, which is totally fine, but I personally won't rely on a lifestyle business SaaS)
The only way this can be improved is if each root vendors like Amazon, MS, and Google actually implemented better UI, but none of them are really focused on this since the reason they're doing this business in the first place is not for consumers but to make sure they have leverage in this space. (If AWS dominated 90%+ of this market, the rest of the companies will be in a great risk in the long run)