The Evolution of Cloud Computing: A Comparative Study from Virtualization to Serverless Architectures

Abstract

The evolution of cloud computing from virtualiza- tion to serverless paradigms has transformed the way appli- cations are deployed, scaled, and managed across distributed environments. Over the years, this transformation has introduced new architectural models that focus on automation, elasticity, and efficiency. Virtual machines provided strong isolation but suffered from high overhead, while containerization improved portability and accelerated application delivery. The latest shift toward serverless computing reduces operational burden by enabling event-driven execution without manual infrastructure management. This review examines research involving serverless platforms and their integration with Network Function Virtu- alization (NFV), Software-Defined Networking (SDN), and edge computing. Studies report significant benefits such as fine-grained autoscaling, cost-efficient execution, simplified orchestration, and faster development cycles. At the same time, challenges like cold-start latency, multi-tenant performance interference, QoS variability, dependency security issues, and the risk of vendor lock-in continue to limit Overall. Existing literature suggests that combining serverless models with virtualization and container techniques can create hybrid cloud environments that deliver better performance stability, improved resource utilization, and stronger flexibility for modern, data-intensive applications.