Lambda is a compute service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) allowing to run code without provisioning or managing servers [lambda]. AWS Lambda claims to scale applications and workloads automatically from few requests per day to thousands per second and charges only for the compute time used.

AWS Lambda can be used in conjunction with other services to build a serverless architecture. This is a cloud architecture typically running a function inside a stateless computing environment triggered by an event [fowler]. Serverless architectures enable to run applications and workloads without managing server infrastructure and with reduced operational costs and flexible scaling [cncf].

In the next section I am going to explain how to build a serverless architecture for running XSpec test suites triggered by an event such as pushing new code to a version control system.