Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2018. Read them in this 10th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Doug Tarr, VP Engineering at mLab
DBaaS Will Adapt as Enterprise Needs Expand
As 2018 approaches, it's a good time
to reflect on how the Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) industry has grown over the
past year and to think about what's ahead. Here are four predictions for the
DBaaS industry in 2018:
- Internet-of-Things
(IoT) growth will drive enterprises toward NoSQL DBaaS options.
- DBaaS adoption will increase as
enterprises migrate on-prem databases to the cloud.
- Startups will leverage DBaaS
solutions from the get-go to prepare for hyper-growth scale.
- Enterprise IT will turn to DBaaS to
support their increasingly complex applications.
1. IoT growth will
drive enterprises toward NoSQL DBaaS options.
Enterprises will
continue to introduce new IoT devices which rely on data models that are
variable. This is where NoSQL databases shine. With relational databases,
dealing with variable data, time-series data, or performing schema migrations
can be difficult. Enterprises working in
the IoT space will look to leverage the highly flexible data modeling available
in NoSQL databases.
For IoT use-cases that
involve ingesting large amounts of data, NoSQL's scale-out model makes it
easier to maintain datasets that would be hard to manage with a relational
database.
2. DBaaS adoption will
increase as enterprises migrate on-prem databases to the cloud.
As more enterprises move their workloads to the public cloud,
they will look to battle-tested DBaaS providers for best practices on compliance
and security. Using a DBaaS provider allows teams to focus on product
development and differentiation, instead of on operational details.
It's not easy to manage the database, a mission-critical
component for most businesses. For example, how do you securely migrate a
database with minimal downtime and ensure data durability? How do you configure
a secure, highly available production database that complies with industry best
practices? An experienced DBaaS provider will have experience helping customers
incorporate best practices.
3. Startups will leverage DBaaS
solutions from the get-go to prepare for hyper-growth scale.
For startups, the time between launch and significant user
adoption is short. Stories of hyper-growth companies, like Lyft and Slack, are happening more
frequently. Startups need to think about scale from the beginning, and make
smart investments. While a startup can save some money by hosting their
database internally, they will need to develop significant in-house database
expertise as their database grows. Expect DBaaS to become the norm for ambitious
startups debuting in 2018. DBaas providers such as mLab will continue to
increase value-add services, making it easier to provision and deploy their
infrastructure.
4. Enterprise IT will turn to DBaaS to
support their increasingly complex applications.
While an application may start small, they will grow over time
as engineers add more features and services. Each feature and service collects
more data, and soon the application and database requirements will become
complex. Enterprise IT will be challenged to keep up and ensure best practices
for each component of their infrastructure. Specifically for the database, they
will be tasked with handling huge amounts of data while ensuring high
availability and great performance. With a DBaaS solution, IT teams can offload
a difficult day-to-day responsibility to experts and instead focus on planning
for the future.
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About the Author
Doug Tarr is VP Engineering at mLab,
a fully managed cloud database service providing automated provisioning,
scaling, and management of MongoDB databases. An engineering and IT leader
since 1995, Tarr is also an EdTech entrepreneur and the founder and director of
MVCode, which teaches children to write code. From 2000 to 2013 he cofounded
and held positions as Vice President of Engineering and Vice President of
Consumer Products / Chief Architect at PayScale, a compensation software
provider serving thousands of businesses and features the world's largest
database of salary profiles. He earned a BA degree in Mathematics from the
University of Chicago.