Last week, EDB hosted a webinar entitled 5 Tenets for 2022 Database Planning, bringing together Carl Olofson, Research Vice President for the International Data Corporation (IDC) and EDB’s CTO Marc Linster. Surveying the landscape that’s driving migration away from on-prem systems, this conversation highlighted the factors that compel organizations to move their databases and applications into both public and private clouds, with an emphasis on the efficacy of PostgreSQL. For those unable to attend, we’ve gathered the key highlights and insights from the event.
The five tenets
At the core of Carl Olofson’s presentation were five critical tenets for database planning, an essential guidebook for any business looking to effectively make the jump to cloud DBMS:
- Solid Technology: Any solutions you use must be both well-established and well-understood across your organization
- Cloud Independence: Invest in a provider that allows you to switch from one public cloud to another, without having to go through the hassle of converting data, changing applications, or switching management tools
- Availability of Talent: Ensure that you have a ready pool of talent, well-versed and ready to work in your database architecture immediately and thereafter
- Freedom to Switch Vendors: Painful conversions and transformations aren’t an issue when you employ open source solutions. As a public technology, it makes switching vendors a breeze
- High Availability and Regional Scaling: A key reason to go with a database cloud service is to get that high availability capability, and the option to scale across regions, without technical design or implementation effort on your part
Each of these ideas plays a vital role in ensuring that a database migration achieves what it’s designed to. One of the chief reasons that businesses invest their resources in cloud DBMS is because of the growing expense and inflexibility of proprietary systems, which fail, over and over. As such, flexibility, scalability, and basic stability lie at the heart of effective cloud DBMS. Looking at these values, the power of Carl Olofon’s five tenets becomes even clearer. Without cloud independence and the freedom to switch vendors the potential for flexibility goes out the window. Without high availability and regional scaling attaining true scalability is impossible. Likewise without solid technology and availability of great talent your cloud DBMS is going to be problematically unstable.
The five tenets, through a PostgreSQL lens
When businesses interrogate these five tenets and use them as a guide for planning their cloud DBMS strategy, they very frequently gravitate towards PostgreSQL.
As EDB CTO Marc Linster explained following Carl Olofson’s presentation, PostgreSQL has long embodied each of these tenets in turn, empowering organizations invested in robust DBMS.
As a testament to the solid technology at the heart of PostgreSQL, Marc Linster cited its stellar reputation among experts, including an impressive showing in recent industry surveys conducted by StackOverFlow, Datadog, and CNCF. StackOverFlow specifically highlighted the wide availability of talent PostgreSQL has accrued due to its longevity. In fact, among its peers, StackOverFlow concluded that PostgreSQL has, by far, the most adherents.
Cloud independence and freedom to switch vendors are two other critical components of PostgreSQL, and one of the biggest reasons so many enterprises rely on it. Not only does PostgreSQL work with every cloud provider and every operating system, but it can be leveraged across a diverse range of use cases, including DBaaS, IaaS, Kubernetes, and Virtual Machines. As a consequence of its ever-growing community, PostgreSQL also regularly receives the input of experts from Credativ, Crunchy Data, Dalibo, EDB, Fujitsu, Microsoft, NTT, PeopleDoc, Postgres Pro, VMWare, and many more. Because of this, the breadth of its compatibility is only growing.
Finally, PostgreSQL’s high availability and regional scaling are renowned among its users. Not only is its streaming replication measured at 99.99%, but its logical replication has been measured at 99.999%. On top of this, PostgreSQL is a powerful ally to anyone working in hybrid cloud environments or with distributed teams across regions, increasingly common realities of our modern way of working.
To say that PostgreSQL has much to recommend it would be an understatement, as Marc Linster aptly demonstrated. In fact, for those who take Carl Olofson’s advice, it just might be your best cloud DBMS friend.
Rising to this defining moment
Now more than ever, businesses are finding themselves at a turning point in how they manage their databases, one of “profound questioning” as Carl Olofson puts it. Not only are companies confronting the reality that data volumes and types are growing faster than ever before, but also seeing a marked acceleration in the pace of business, the demand for increasingly rapid data management, and a growing emphasis on the need to access massive amounts of data with ease. Business paths are becoming less and less predictable, and proprietary technology is proving more and more unsuited to the needs and demands of markets.
Migrating databases to the cloud, thus, appears as an increasingly viable strategy, but as Carl Olofson explains many struggle to find the best approach to this undertaking. Consider the prevalence of the “lift and shift” approach. While some believe this strategy to be the quickest and easiest, it's also the most unstable. Any time, money, or manpower you save over the course of your migration will be drained right away when you encounter deep-rooted problems in your new database architecture. The real savings, as Carl Olofson states, lie in a move from microbatch to microservices, which—while not as immediately convenient—yields far better results at the end of the day.
It’s from these realities that the five tenets are derived, and it’s also these realities that make their usage so essential.
EDB believes in the power of database migration planning
There’s no two ways about it: enterprises are moving to the cloud, which means big decisions are on the horizon. As organizations look to new database technologies, they must seek out those which are the most flexible, robust, and scalable. Luckily, through a combination of the cloud and open source solutions, businesses are finding success, support, and growth, as they evolve their DBMS strategies for a rapidly changing future.
At EDB, we pride ourselves on our expertise and our attention to the needs of all companies looking to take the next step with their DBMS. It’s why we work so closely with organizations to help devise the ideal migration strategy, whether gradual or immediate, that will allow them to make the most of their databases and their applications.
With the recent launch of EDB 14 and Big Animal, we’re taking that to the next level. We want to help you seize on everything that Carl Olofson described, and avoid the pitfalls that a rocky migration plan can create. Being in the right hands will help you handle your serious cloud database workloads, and take advantage of all the cloud has to offer.