Title

AWS re:Invent 2023 - How to create a serverless center of excellence (SVS214)

Summary

George, a senior distinguished engineer at Capital One, shares insights on adopting a serverless-first approach and building cloud-native serverless compute architectures.
Capital One, a technology-driven bank, has closed its last data center in 2020 and is now fully on AWS.
The session covers why Capital One chose serverless, lessons learned, and the creation of a serverless center of excellence (COE).
Serverless architectures are event-driven and can be synchronous, asynchronous, or poll-based.
Serverless allows developers to focus on writing business logic without managing infrastructure, leading to happier developers and reduced AWS infrastructure costs.
Capital One's serverless COE sets standards, provides expertise, and helps avoid technical debt.
Best practices and common pitfalls in serverless development are discussed, including optimization, cost management, and standardization.
Tools like AWS SAM, Lambda Power Tuner, and CloudWatch are recommended for improving development and operational efficiency.

Capital One's transition to a serverless-first approach signifies a broader industry trend towards cloud-native architectures, emphasizing scalability, cost-efficiency, and developer productivity.
The establishment of a serverless COE at Capital One highlights the importance of centralized governance and standardization in large-scale cloud environments, especially in regulated industries.
The detailed discussion on AWS SAM and its local debugging capabilities indicates a shift in serverless development practices, aiming to replicate cloud environments locally for faster iteration.
The emphasis on cost optimization and performance tuning, including the use of tools like Lambda Power Tuner, reflects a growing need for cost-awareness and efficiency in serverless computing.
The session underscores the importance of staying current with AWS best practices and features, such as using the latest SDK versions and leveraging new services like Snap Start for Java cold start improvements.
The talk suggests that serverless computing is not just about technology but also about cultural and process changes within organizations, requiring education and a shift in mindset towards a serverless-first approach.