DigitalOcean Functions GA

May 25, 2022

DigitalOcean launched its new serverless solution, DigitalOcean Functions. DigitalOcean Functions will enable fast, scalable and cost-effective compute solutions that will allow small businesses and startups to build quickly, scale automatically, and save costs by eliminating the need to maintain and provision their own servers.

“Serverless functions have been one of our most common customer requests,” says Gabe Monroy, Chief Product Officer of DigitalOcean. “That's why last year we acquired Nimbella, a leading serverless platform, and have been focused on seamless integration with our cloud. DigitalOcean Functions will allow builders to spend less time maintaining their infrastructure and more time creating and scaling software that changes the world.”

Despite the proliferation of cloud computing in recent years, developers — particularly those in small businesses and startups — often complain about the considerable effort and cost involved in provisioning and scaling server infrastructure. DigitalOcean Functions will enable developers to build or expand their apps quickly without needing to manage the underlying infrastructure. Instead, applications will be able to scale automatically and instantly based on demand, making the solution ideal for unpredictable workloads.

According to IDC’s IaaSView buyer survey, 25% of cloud IaaS buyers intend to utilize serverless functions in the next 12 months — one of the highest rates of planned adoption compared to other adjacent cloud services. DigitalOcean Functions is uniquely positioned to serve the needs of individual developers and businesses by providing:

- A unified and integrated experience for apps that require long-running servers and on-demand functions
- A developer console to test functions prior to pushing to production
- Seamless integration with DigitalOcean Managed Databases
- Support for common languages and runtimes

“DigitalOcean Functions is a great blend of flexibility and ease of use that allows my team to keep all projects under one provider,” says Jonathan Hsu, Director of Customer Success at Zerion Software. “It enables us to quickly add serverless APIs to our website resulting in increased team productivity and faster time to market.”

“By adding native serverless tools and functions to its compute portfolio, DigitalOcean can begin to capitalize on this growing demand from IaaS buyers,” says Andrew Smith, research manager, Cloud Infrastructure Services at IDC. “The central tenet of DigitalOcean Functions is simplicity — in pricing, deployment, utilization and integration with other DigitalOcean services such as App Platform and Managed Databases. This simplicity should appeal well to DigitalOcean’s core customer base, including developers, startups, and SMBs looking to utilize serverless computing in order to abstract their infrastructure resources and focus on modernizing their applications and workloads.”

DigitalOcean Functions is available now in all DigitalOcean data center regions