The database forms a key part of any enterprise. It supports applications, it ensures information is available when and where it's needed, and it supports critical business processes. It's also the repository for all that data that's needed to make critical business decisions.
Business and IT managers face the challenge of being expected to store ever increasing quantities of data and make the latest versions of that data instantly available. For the majority of today's businesses, no access to their data means little or no business can be conducted for the duration of the outage.
Leon Swarts, Managing Director of Taulite, says: "Administering and maintaining a database can be a costly exercise but it is possible to reduce the cost of maintaining your database infrastructure by optimising the way you support, manage and store your data."
Swarts elaborates: "The majority of businesses don't have the luxury of a team of database administrators with the latest and most current skillset to manage their database. Staying on top of the continuous improvements that are being introduced in the administration of databases can be hard to manage if it is not your core business activity, not to mention staying abreast of changing technology and service support structures."
He believes there's a definite business case for outsourcing database administration as a service. "The benefits are many, including access to metrics to measure their success, guaranteed database availability, proactive monitoring, a healthy database infrastructure, optimised licensing, predictable and stable costs, and access to emerging technology and the skills that go with that."
If your team of database administrators comprises less than three people, then you're faced with challenges regarding availability, maintaining skills, 24/7 support and sustainability in terms of resource churn, resulting in a huge risk for the business. "Converting to managed services will give you immediate access to skills, processes, monitoring, documentation, capacity and 24/7 support."
With teams that have more than three members, the challenges include high and increasing costs, managing skills and training, standardisation of technology, processes and support. There's also additional complexity involved in managing large, skilled teams.
When IT budgets are tight, outsourcing relieves the business's HR department of the need to manage additional people, deal with staff turnover and salary complexities such as overtime. It also removes the burden from the business of having to constantly monitor its databases, and worry about how to prevent failures. It also alleviates the pressure of providing database technical support, as well as managing the deployment of new releases of software updates or patches.
Implementing the best technology for the right application also results in significant cost-savings on both software licences and infrastructure.
Swarts adds: "Managed services can provide reliable database availability, even outside of normal business hours, at a reduced or fixed cost. This becomes more important now than ever before with the emphasis on using data analytics to forecast and run the business. The ability to manage, store and secure your business's data requires a very specific skillset. Outsourcing simplifies your business model, freeing you up to focus your time and energies on your core business activities and generating sales."
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