Serverless computing continues to lack the status or even recognition of cloud and containers among the enterprise elite. But it may have taken a step toward at least acknowledgement by IT departments and developers with the release by Stackery of a management product.

The succinctly-named Serverless Operations Console is designed to “operationalize” the use of serverless in enterprise environments. This is done through a set of software tools that provide developers with increased control over serverless deployments in a production-grade environment.

At its core, the software provides an abstraction layer on top of base serverless technologies like Amazon Web Services (AWS) Lambda. This removes the need to configure infrastructure services. Instead, the focus can be on design architectures; automating deployment of infrastructure and applications; integration with control software; management; and controlling serverless deployments.

Stackery CEO and Co-Founder Nate Taggart said the company has been running the console over the past year in production environments with production workloads. “It has been battle tested,” Taggart boasted.

Serverless computing by its nature is designed to reduce the amount of overhead associated with offering services in the cloud. This includes the ability for a cloud provider to dynamically manage server resources.

In reducing potential waste and taking advantage of their diminutive resource needs, serverless computing also allows for pricing models that typically break down access by tenths of a second. Think of serverless as the container equivalent to virtual machines (VMs).

Taggart and Stackery Co-Founder Chase Douglas formed the company in 2016. Both had been early employees at New Relic and worked together on developing the company’s Browser. They left New Relic after its IPO.

The two quickly jumped on the serverless space following the AWS launch of the Lambda architecture.

Taggart acknowledged that serverless computing architectures remain nascent in the enterprise space. While the company is seeing traction and use by IT operations and DevOps engineers, some unique challenges remain to be solved ahead of broader adoption.

Taggart noted one of those challenges was ongoing uncertainty into how this architecture can be integrated into current cloud and container operations. This includes the basic lack of familiarity for management and control over deployment.

“Serverless is still in its early stages,” Taggart said. "This is a new skillset that needs to be mastered, and by putting in place some familiarity it allows enterprises to be more comfortable, quicker. We really worked on making the console something that a customer would be familiar with.”

Similar to the overall serverless market that is focused most today on AWS’ Lambda architecture, Stackery’s initial build is integrated into that ecosystem. Taggart said the console’s design will allow it to integrate with other platforms as they gain traction, including plans for Microsoft Azure Functions early next year.

Despite the cited easing of deployment provided by the new console, Taggart said the company does provide some guidance for initial work. This includes a pilot program to peer an enterprise with an engineer on the first deployment and an onsite visit if necessary.

“It’s not really about us providing ongoing consulting, but in getting them started on using serverless across the organization,” Taggart said.

And getting started is the first step toward success for serverless computing.