Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2018. Read them in this 10th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Ben Bromhead, CTO, Instaclustr
DBaaS Going Beyond the Database
2017 has
really seen increased adoption of DBaaS strategies and implementation across
industries, as more businesses discover that they can achieve the database availability,
scalability, and performance they require while concentrating technical
resources more acutely on product development. In the coming year, expect
hosted and managed database services to be further fleshed out to include a
greater breadth of technical capabilities and features to match ever-evolving
business needs.
More
specifically, here's what the industry should expect to see in 2018:
1. Look for DBaaS services to
go beyond the database and begin including integrated data layer components.
Expect
DBaaS providers to expand their solution packages at a more rapid pace in 2018,
identifying and meeting key customer needs adjacent to their current offerings.
This will likely include managed services providing other components of the
data layer that interact with the database - such as integrated data software
and related infrastructure.
At the
same time, I think the coming year will also see DBaaS providers develop and
offer technology stacks designed to serve specialized use cases. For instance,
businesses developing IoT applications will be able to rely on their DBaaS to
deliver the specifically appropriate database clusters, architecture,
infrastructure, security, etc most relevant to that sector. For our own part, we
plan to add a managed solution for Apache
Kafka to Instaclustr's offerings
in 2018, which will allow us to meet a recognized customer need for more efficient
processing of streaming data (provided as-a-service).
2. 2018 will see DBaaS enabling
customers to more automatically and dynamically scale clusters up and down to
deal with varying demand.
Businesses
with a DBaaS strategy already have the ability to spin up developer nodes in minutes
with all the needed software, infrastructure, and configurations in place - a
feat which could take days of work plus vigilant maintenance to accomplish
internally. DBaaS also makes it simple to spin up and spin down servers of
every type and size, in order to rapidly test different infrastructure components
during development. But this coming year, look for DBaaS providers to add to
this flexibility by allowing businesses to scale clusters dynamically as demand
dictates, reducing operational pain and providing a greater value while deftly
handling any sudden fluctuations that test the database's scalability.
3. DBaaS solutions will move
even closer to 100% uptime in 2018, thanks to more advanced automation, predictive
fault-finding, and continuous health checking.
The
maturing DBaaS market is improving capabilities to deliver automation, optimal
configurations, and continual monitoring of data layer infrastructure. These
capabilities are really now reaching a level where the system health of this
infrastructure will virtually never be in doubt, and the constant activities of
the maintenance systems that make this true will be invisible to the customer.
4. Open source will increasingly
be preferred over proprietary technologies.
I
predict the trend line in favor of DBaaS built around open source technologies
will continue to grow. Enterprises are increasingly needing to avoid the risks associated
with proprietary technologies such as vendor and technology lock-in, and are
more and more realizing open source's advantages in retaining control over
their own code and improved security. Expect data-related open source solutions
to flourish in the coming year. For the last few years I've been talking to
companies about their multi-cloud strategy, from both vendor lock-in and
systemic risk management perspectives. For a lot of them, the immediate goal really
has to be simply adopting the cloud - but now, strategic thinking in this space
has matured and enterprises have clearly identified the need to choose
technologies that work across all cloud providers.
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About the Author
Ben Bromhead is CTO at Instaclustr, a provider of enterprise-grade,
hosted and fully managed Apache Cassandra open source data infrastructure in
the cloud. Prior to Instaclustr (which he co-founded), Ben had been working as
an independent consultant developing NoSQL solutions for enterprises. He is
based out of Instaclustr's Silicon Valley office.