2-Big Data Becomes Part of Normal Day-to-Day Business
Relational data coming out of transactional systems is now only part of the enterprise equation, and will share the stage to a greater degree with data that previously could not be cost-effectively captured, managed, analyzed, and stored. This includes data coming in from sensors, applications, social media, and mobile devices. With increased implementations of tools and platforms to manage this data—including NoSQL databases and Hadoop—organizations will be better equipped to prepare this data for consumption by analytic software. A recent survey of Database Trends and Applications readers finds 26% now running Hadoop within their enterprises—up from 12% 3 years ago. A majority, 63%, also now operate NoSQL databases at their locations (DBTA Quick Poll: New Database Technologies, April 2014).
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3-Cloud Opens Up Database as a Service
More and more, data managers and professionals will be working with cloud-based solutions and data, whether associated with a public cloud service, or an in-house database-as-a-service (DBaaS) solution. This presents many new opportunities to provide new capabilities to organizations, as well as new challenges. Moving to cloud means new programming and data modeling approaches will be needed. Integration between on-premises and off-premises data also will be intensifying. Data security will be a front-burner issue. Recent Unisphere Research surveys find that close to two-fifths of enterprises either already have or are considering running database functions within a private cloud, and about one-third are currently using or considering a public cloud service. For more than 25% of organizations, usage of private-cloud services increased over the past year.
Cloud and virtualization are being seamlessly absorbed into the jobs of most database administrators, and in some cases, reducing traditional activity while expending their roles. Database as a service (DBaaS), or running databases and managing data within an enterprise private cloud setting, offers data managers and executives a means to employ shared services to manage their fast-growing environments. The potential advantage of DBaaS is that database managers need not re-create processes or environments from scratch, as these resources can be pre-packaged based on corporate or compliance standards and made readily available within the enterprise cloud. Close to half of enterprises say they would like to see capacity planning services offered through private clouds, while 40% look for shared database resources. A similar number would value cloud-based services providing automated database provisioning.
4-Virtualization and Software-Defined Data Centers on the Way
Until recently, mentioning the term “platform” brought images of Windows, mainframe, and Linux servers to mind. However, for most enterprises, platform has become irrelevant. This extends to the database sphere as well—many of the functions associated with specific databases can be abstracted away from underlying hardware and software.
The use of virtualization is helping to alleviate strains being created by the increasing size and complexity of database environments. The use of virtualization within database environments is increasing. Almost two-thirds of organizations in a recent Unisphere Research survey say there have been increases over the past year. Nearly half report that more than 50% of their IT infrastructure is virtualized. The most common benefits organizations report as a result of using virtualization within their database environments are reduced costs, consolidation, and standardization of their infrastructure (“The Empowered Database: 2014 Enterprise Platform Decisions Survey,” September 2014).