Serverless is an emerging cloud computing paradigm that facilitates
developers to focus solely on the application logic rather than provisioning
and managing the underlying infrastructure. The inherent characteristics such
as scalability, flexibility, and cost efficiency of serverless computing,
attracted many companies to migrate their legacy applications toward this
paradigm. However, the stateless nature of serverless requires careful
migration planning, consideration of its subsequent implications, and potential
challenges. To this end, this study investigates the intentions, strategies,
and technical and organizational challenges while migrating to a serverless
architecture. We investigated the migration processes of 11 systems across
diverse domains by conducting 15 in-depth interviews with professionals from 11
organizations. we also presented a detailed discussion of each migration case.
Our findings reveal that large enterprises primarily migrate to enhance
scalability and operational efficiency, while smaller organizations intend to
reduce the cost. Furthermore, organizations use a domain-driven design approach
to identify the use case and gradually migrate to serverless using a strangler
pattern. However, migration encounters technical challenges i.e., testing
event-driven architecture, integrating with the legacy system, lack of
standardization, and organizational challenges i.e., mindset change and hiring
skilled serverless developers as a prominent. The findings of this study
provide a comprehensive understanding that can guide future implementations and
advancements in the context of serverless migration