To cloud or not to cloud" sounds kind of Shakespearean in tone and is a legitimate question every IT organization faces when looking to simplify operations and deliver services. But really, this is an old argument. Everything in the datacenter is being cloudified. The real question is whether to keep services and functions on-prem. Everything is moving to an "as-a-Service" (XaaS) model thanks to the simplicity and cost savings companies have seen through the public cloud.
I think the way this XaaS evolution happens is pretty logical. The "killer apps" or low-hanging fruit is first to transition, and everything follows. And as the title of this article would imply, I think database services are a prime candidate for cloudification.
First, the setup - It’s a data(base) driven world
Data is the fuel that drives modern business. While this is a played-out statement, it's more accurate than ever. Statista estimates that 2021 will see 74 zettabytes of data generated. And that number will grow to over 180 zettabytes by 2025.
While this is an impressive number, there is a substantial downstream impact on IT organizations and, more precisely, database professionals that go unnoticed. These teams are being pushed beyond their limits. For a few reasons:
1. The sheer proliferation of database and database instances being stood up across the average enterprise. While exact quantification is difficult, it is fair to estimate the average number of active databases in the enterprise is in the hundreds.