Benefits of Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Introduction:

Companies have long used relational database management systems (RDBMS) to power their mission-critical applications. However, these systems have proven to be cumbersome to manage as more and more applications with database back-ends are deployed. They can’t automatically scale their resources in response to varying workload demands, licensing costs continue to escalate, and ongoing administration including monitoring, backups, and event remediation is onerous.

The emergence of cloud technologies and enhancements in database platforms have spawned solutions to these challenges, including one known as database as a service (DBaaS). This article provides a high-level overview of DBaaS, its benefits, considerations for implementation and what to think about when choosing a DBaaS provider. A section is also included which focuses specifically on a solution for companies with SQL Server-dependent applications.

DBaaS is a cloud database deployment model that delivers a powerful, on-demand database platform that streamlines provisioning, administration, recovery, scaling and security. Specialized expertise can be employed, leveraging economies of scale for routine administration, backup, recovery and tuning tasks, alleviating the weakness of system administrator generalists while freeing up time to focus on more strategic initiatives.

While DBaaS is similar to a “hosted database,” it offers far improved security isolation. Benefits are also derived from the intersection of cloud characteristics related to the underlying infrastructure including rapid elasticity, metered billing, the illusion of infinite supply and ubiquitous access.

The benefits of DBaaS vary, based on the provider and how the solution is structured, but can include:

• A shift from capital expense for hardware and software to operating expense for the database service. Companies can realize significant cost savings by purchasing database capacity and functionality as needed, and don’t have to invest in advance of future requirements.
• Rapid or on-demand, self-service-based database provisioning. DBaaS allows for provisioning an environment in a very short period in contrast to days or weeks, thus reducing time to market.
• The ability of the customer to leverage existing servers and storage through automated resource management across standalone, clustered, virtualized and non-virtualized.
• The ability to outsource the administration and monitoring of databases such as backup, recovery, tuning, optimization, patching, upgrading and creation. Based on the policies that are defined by DBAs, database administration tasks can be automated — scheduled or proactively initiated to support various database activities.
• Granular metering of database usage that can be used for chargeback to various database users. Tracking is typically based on usage time, space, availability guarantees and resource consumption and provides an aggregated view per database.
• Freeing up of IT staff to focus on the logical administration of the database and the application data. The DBaaS provider provides a comprehensive database operating environment and a service-level agreement (SLA). Internal IT staffs don’t have to build and manage the physical environment, and physical database administration tasks are offloaded to the DBaaS provider.
• Repurposing servers and storage. Servers and storage are often underutilized; DBaaS offers the ability to repurpose system resources more efficiently, resulting in significant cost savings.
• Support for faster application development and testing. DBaaS enables faster provisioning of new databases and automates the administration process, which helps organizations deliver database instances faster to developers, testers and architects.
• Improved availability for various applications. DBaaS can improve high availability of databases, especially for non-critical applications, by enabling failover of databases to available system resources. Typically these best practice architectures would not be cost effective in a dedicated environment.

From early-stage, start-ups to multi-national corporations, companies of all sizes can potentially benefit from being able to outsource and consolidate database management tasks on a standardized and optimized platform. DBaaS solutions are particularly ideal for small- and medium-sized businesses that have found in-house database solutions cost-prohibitive and that lack in-house expertise. DBaaS provides these businesses with access to the same technologies that were once limited to the budgets of only large enterprises.

For larger companies, DBaaS can offer solutions at the departmental level without bringing in IT or procurement, providing a much quicker, easier way to implement line of business solutions.

Conclusion:

DBaaS is also extremely beneficial for companies with use cases involving database functionality that requires rapid provisioning or on-demand scalability. That includes proof-of-concept environments and development and testing environments for new applications, unified application life-cycle environments on a single platform, seasonal or varying demand applications, and cost-effective business continuity/ disaster recovery (BC/DR) environments.

At easySERVICE Data Solutions, our DBaaS service ensures consistent database security and IT best practices across multiple databases. Although it is designed for mission-critical applications, many companies use it, at least initially, for applications that are given lower priority due to a lack of DBA resources.

According to the US Department of Commerce, two of the biggest challenges that businesses seeking IT outsourcing face is the cost benefit rationalization or justification and inexperience. Our clients took deliberate steps to overcome these challenges, by trusting easySERVICE. Using our enterprise-class networking and connectivity technologies, we provide the highest levels of availability, recovery, security, and performance.

Our easySERVICE™ Program helps organizations design, build, migrate, manage, and protect their Cloud-based environments. This especially designed backup solution helps small to medium sized organizations meet RPOs and RTOs, save time, eliminate risks and dramatically reduce capital and operational costs.

If you’d like to discuss any of the above best practices or lessons learned with us or to learn more about how we are partnering with companies just like yours to ensure the availability of mission-critical applications, please contact us at (855) US STELLAR.