Startup latency

Serverless' building blocks are ephemeral and time-boxed functions that get executed based on specific triggers or events, generated upstream of the execution. The runtime for these functions are configured and provisioned by the providers on demand. In the case of a runtime that requires some startup time, like JVM, the execution time of the function is buffered by the time taken for the startup. This can be a tricky situation for real-time operations, as it presents a lagging user experience. There are, of course, workarounds for such problems, but this has to be taken into account when creating solutions powered by serverless architectures.