Sustainability Efficiency Challenges of Modern IT Architectures – A Quality Model for Serverless Energy Footprint

Cloud technology is transforming IT architecture. Serverless is a new paradigm driven by cloud technology that offers chances for scalable and reliable IT services. All bigger cloud service providers (CSP) offer a set of serverless services to build entire business processes on it. The services are mostly based on efficient containerization of the workload. However, the service offers are driven by parameters like scaling, availability, ease of use and costs. So far, no cloud provider has been providing information about service efficiency, in particular energy efficiency. However, breaking down complex services into micro, nano or pico services as serverless comes with an energy overhead. This energy footprint of serverless architectures demands a specific quality model to refine the ISO 25010 for the serverless domain. The model presented in this article is provided as a self-service to the Volkswagen Group IT to enable all architects and software engineers to evaluate the trade-offs with respect to sustainability aspects.