Written by
Madhukar Kumar, VP Product Marketing, Redis Labs
We are living in a society that demands
instant experiences. Consumers want to make in-store purchases with the tap of
a credit card or phone, deposit checks with a picture and order a car with the
tap of a finger. They know what they want, and they want it now.
A disruption to that experience can result in
customer churn and ultimately lost revenue for the companies that make up this
instant economy. When consumers thinks about instant experiences, they probably
think about applications. Lyft, Twitter, Snapchat and PayPal all deliver
instant services in some fashion, but it's database technology that powers
these apps and enables them to respond to customer requests immediately.
But how did we get to expecting instant
experiences in the first place? For some, this may be considered a chicken or
the egg scenario of what came first. Did developers foresee the capabilities of
database technology for enabling instant results, or did consumers drive the
creation of a world where products and services must be delivered faster?
The
Evolution of the Database Industry
To answer the question of "what is driving the
instant economy?" we should look at the evolution of the technology itself.
Initially, databases only served as a place to
store data, but a problem rapidly emerged. The sheer volume of data exploded,
and traditional, on-premise databases were unable to withstand the amount of
data that needed to be stored. When the cloud was introduced with the promise
of scalability and cost-savings, it was a revolutionary advancement but also
brought with it huge volumes of data.
Along with this large volume of data,the cloud
also brought a new obstacle: unstructured data that could not be always be
stored in a relational format. Consequently, we saw the rise of NoSQL, which provided an easy, flexible way to
store varying data.
But some challenges remain. While many
databases can now withstand variety and volume, they are unable to maintain
low-latency performance. To put it simply, countless applications still
struggle to deliver an uninterrupted experience with zero downtime.
Changing
Consumer Demands
Organizations who cannot deliver services in
real-time bring almost nothing to the table for their customers. In other
words, the faster you can process a large amount of information, the stronger
your competitive advantage. So, what does this mean for how database technology
is powering the instant experience for consumers?
Two common use-cases are user session stores
and high-speed transactions. A user session is typically a collection of user
preferences, choices and actions recorded from each time a customer opens or
logs into an app and spends time in it. User session stores are where the data
on that activity is kept. For example, when a customer logs onto a shopping app
and adds products to the cart, those items should be saved, even if the
purchase is not yet complete. This data, in turn, allows companies to drive
more personalized app experiences.
As the database gets bigger and consumers log
in from different devices, processing this information becomes more complex and
many applications struggle with latency issues. This can cause disruptions and
delays to the user's experience while using the app. Worse, not having a
durable or stable session store could lead to experiences where users would
have to repeat actions every time they log back into the application, such as
having to re-add products to a cart because they were not saved.
A similar concept applies to how high-speed
transactions are delivered. Imagine a customer is paying for something through
a phone or watch. If that device does not work instantly, the customer will
quickly turn to traditional payment methods like cash and cards. Companies
require database technology enabled with seamless, automatic scaling for
consistent high performance and zero downtime, ensuring an uninterrupted
consumer experience on their applications. That technology now exists.
Companies can cost-effectively store data in-memory so that it can be processed
instantly.
Businesses across all industries need to realize that
significant revenue and their brand's reputation is on the line if their apps
are not fast enough. Consumers' expectations for app speed are constantly
increasing and with countless options of where to spend their money, a slow app
is reason enough for a customer to take their business elsewhere.
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About the Author
Madhukar is a product
strategist with a track record of successfully running product management and
product marketing teams for the last 10+ years. He has held several leadership
positions in small and large technology companies like Zuora, HP and Oracle
where he was responsible for building vision, go to market strategies and
opening up new markets for hyper growth. More recently he ran product strategy
and product marketing at Oracle for Customer Experience (CX) products portfolio
including Marketing, CRM, Commerce and Service. In the last 10 years he has
also been writing in technology journals and speaking at several industry
events across the globe around disruptive new technologies affecting businesses
and the future of customer experience.