Glynn Bird (@glynn_bird) remembers the days when he had to install servers in racks and maintain connectivity manually. Since then, the unit of scalability has evolved from the server, to the platform - and now to individual event-driven functions.

In this episode, Glynn gives a primer on function-as-a-service (FaaS) and Apache OpenWhisk™, including why you can think of FaaS as "the ultimate microservice" and an extension of PaaS (4:00), why a FaaS and microservices approach may be a better fit for startups and teams that need to keep things small (8:40), how to get started with OpenWhisk (11:40), and how he used OpenWhisk and IBM Cloudant to program his Alexa to report temperature readings from his house (16:52).

You can find new episodes of The New Builders on developerWorks TV and SoundCloud. Find out more about IBM Watson Data Platform at ibm.co/watsondataplatform. Contact host Jim Young on Twitter (@JW_Young) or email ([email protected]). The show’s music is provided by School for Robots. Check them out at schoolforrobots.bandcamp.com!