By Phillip de Waal, Systems Engineering Manager at Nutanix Sub-Saharan Africa

The global cloud database and database as a service (DBaaS) market is projected to reach the $25 billion mark by 2025. One of the drivers behind this is the increasing need for self-driving cloud databases. This is hardly surprising, given how rapidly databases have grown in recent years.

The list of database options open to business and technology leaders is truly dizzying. From relational and non-relational databases to the likes of time series databases, key-value databases, multi-model databases, graph databases, cloud databases, and object-oriented databases, there is a database for every business requirement.

Unfortunately, this has seen companies having to allocate expensive specialist resources like database administrators (DBAs) to manage and secure this sprawling environment.

Fortunately, the DBaaS model provides local businesses with the opportunity to run their databases from anywhere with automated setup, maintenance, patching, upgrades, security, and recovery. Just consider the potential opportunities that rapid deployment, low latency, high performance, and robust data governance will unlock for South African organisations.

Let us explore a few of the most significant benefits to be gained from going the DBaaS route.

1. High level of control

DBaaS means that IT departments gain a high level of control over their database environments and frees up the business (and its specialist resources) to focus more on innovating and less on managing databases.

2. Scaling sorted

Typically, a DBaaS solution must run on a highly available and intelligent platform that is either on-premises or in the public cloud. This means that adding more databases and other systems can happen on an as-needed basis. These databases run with all housekeeping work taken care of by the software and the intelligent platform. Ultimately, on-site IT resources can deliver more strategic value than just ‘keeping the database lights on’.

3. Fire and forget

DBaaS empowers the organisation achieve a sort of IT Nirvana where IT specialists can become the catalysts for smarter business operations and insightful, real-time decision-making. Once the database is up and running in a DBaaS environment, it becomes the ideal self-sustaining system.

4. Options galore

As with any software-based solution, DBaaS removes the potential of being locked into a specific hypervisor platform or cloud vendor. So, companies do not have to worry about being limited to a single database provider. Instead, they can provision databases on a ‘horses for courses’ basis. Effectively, they can match their organisation's needs with the correct database engine. This reduces costs and ensures the core enterprise database environment stays agile instead of being weighed down with unnecessary services.

5. Performance boost

By having the choice to pick and choose the proper database for the job, companies can also experience a true hybrid approach from cloud environments that include the likes of AWS, Azure, and Google. With most new applications using DBaaS, the optimisation that is going this route provides a business cannot be achieved by relying on traditional, legacy databases.

DBaaS delivers a level of automation, availability, and backup in a cost-effective way. Plus, there is no need to have deep technical skills to benefit from it. Globally, DBaaS is becoming the standard way to run and manage databases while reducing the sprawl that has emerged over the years.

Power in flexibility

Technology decision-makers want their organisations to be agile. This means the days of heavy lifting on-premises databases while trying to run complex data centres are gone. Welcome to the era of a federated, light-touch environment that allows businesses the freedom to focus on reaching their core strategic objectives.

DBaaS is also evolving. Over the coming months we will likely see companies managing more database types with DBaaS and applying automation across hybrid cloud environments. For their part, DBaaS providers will build in more controls for adherence to changing regulations and the changing cybersecurity threat landscape.

DBaaS is another arrow in the quiver of CIOs and a step towards the promised land of IT invisibility where systems ‘just work’. And who wants to argue with the benefits that this can bring?