Digitalization is causing many organizations to seek a cloud-agnostic database management solution that can unlock the value in their siloed data.
The use of emerging technologies is creating a wealth of detailed customer data which, if harnessed correctly, will be vital to businesses looking to keep pace with changing consumer behavior and market demands.
The key term here is “if harnessed correctly”. However, many organizations still rely on legacy databases (sometimes decades old) that are poorly suited to modern digital workflows. These commercial databases may offer high performance and advanced availability features but are expensive and complex to operate.
To harness the value of their data, organizations must provide rapid, performant, secure access to the researchers, scientists, developers, and other end consumers of the data. Traditional IT operations, combined with the complexity of legacy databases, make this nearly impossible, drastically reducing time to value and productivity.
Turning to the Cloud
To address these concerns, increasingly businesses are moving to cloud-based database solutions to complement or replace their legacy systems. Channels like smartphones and Internet of Things devices in the Asia Pacific region (APAC) are set to create the highest growth in demand for cloud databases of any region between now and 2025.
However, cloud-native databases present their own challenges, such as application integration, security, and data sovereignty. To manage the shift to cloud, many organizations are turning to hybrid and multi-cloud strategies that allow them to work across their legacy IT infrastructure, private cloud, and one or more public clouds.
Defining the right cloud strategy can give organizations a competitive edge by enhancing flexibility, simplifying IT management and optimizing costs; our recent research found that 86% of IT decision makers surveyed considered hybrid their ideal operating model.
However, the move to hybrid and multi-cloud necessitates managing multiple and often siloed databases, and many organizations have yet to find the right multi-cloud database management solution that eliminates operational duplication while unlocking the value in their data.
Cloud-agnostic DBaaS
A hybrid cloud architecture is an ideal place to start to deliver new capabilities and modernize existing IT, but to truly benefit from evolving technologies and maintain a competitive advantage, organizations need to reduce inefficiencies and enable rapid scalability. Enter Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS), which refers to software and/or services that enable users to set up, operate, and scale databases without the need for setting up physical hardware, installing software, or configuring for performance.
All administrative tasks and maintenance are managed by the service provider. The most advanced DBaaS platforms also integrate lifecycle management as well as copy data management, further reducing operational overhead while increasing agility.
Most organizations have complex, multi-vendor database estates, usually both on-premises and in one or more cloud platforms. Choosing a cloud-agnostic DBaaS solution that supports multiple database engines can simplify database operations and promote agility by eliminating the need to separately configure and tune each of the resources, regardless of where they run individually.
Evolving database management
A great example of a successful push to simplify database management is RBL Bank. The bank had discovered that its application and database administrators (DBAs) were continually playing catch-up in terms of maintenance tasks and new services requests. Furthermore, DBAs were regularly taking clones of the databases (each taking up to one Terabyte of storage)—a significant addition to the company’s IT costs, and a time consuming, repetitive task.
By simplifying its database management, RBL’s team gained the ability to provision, manage, refresh, and restore the bank’s many databases in a single click. Additionally, the bank was able to significantly simplify the backup process, resulting in far greater ease of use, speed and cost efficiency.
Importantly, thanks to greater automation, scalability and reliability, the bank was able to improve its ability to take advantage of business opportunities and respond to customers’ needs at speed.
The accelerating shift to a digital first, mobile first, ubiquitously connected world presents amazing opportunities. As enterprises seek to capitalize on these shifts, hybrid and multi-cloud offerings will be the architecture of choice to deliver the flexibility, security, and performance required to meet business needs.
By embracing DBaaS across clouds, organizations can unlock the data mobility, agility and scalability necessary to survive and thrive in the current business climate, and be ready for whatever the future holds.
