Innovative businesses love Postgres in the cloud for its flexibility, reliability and agility. Because it embodies the freedom that draws so many enterprises to the cloud in the first place, Postgres and the cloud have proven to be a perfect match.
But organizations looking to take full advantage of cloud Postgres must be careful when selecting their cloud vendor. The fact is that not all cloud providers are created equal, and if your business doesn’t carefully examine the options, the database that was supposed to be your gateway to success could quickly become your single greatest hindrance.
That’s why EDB hosted our latest webinar “Choosing the Right Postgres Vendor in the Cloud.” Now available to watch on-demand, this webinar brought together EDB Cloud Evangelist Sarah Conway and I to discuss the variables you must consider and the questions you should ask when making critical business decisions about your database:
- What key factors do I need to consider when selecting my new home in the cloud?
- What problems arise when these factors are ignored?
- How does fully managed Postgres mitigate these problems?
In this short recap, we’ll specifically explore the five biggest risks that we want buyers to look out for.
5 major risks informed cloud buyers must consider
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Support risks
When you make the decision to entrust your database infrastructure to a specific cloud provider, you need to be confident that they’ll have your back when you need guidance and troubleshooting. While every vendor will assure you that their support won’t fail you, you need a guaranteed full-circle of database protection 24x7x365 in order to avoid unnecessary issues. Remember: avoidable downtime is revenue lost.
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Service risks
One of the major draws of a managed cloud database is that your provider will handle operational and maintenance responsibilities so you don’t have to. However, it’s important to know the exact extent of these services. Otherwise, your organization can encounter major issues with unplanned outages, CPU issues and architectural instability which could bring your DBMS crashing down.
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Technology stagnation risks
Believe it or not, not all cloud providers can keep up with a database like Postgres, which is constantly evolving and introducing new features. If your provider is behind on versions and upgrades, the cutting edge of your business—developers and DevOps—is going to grind to a halt, unable to achieve their planned innovations with the behind-the-times tools at their disposal.
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Cost risks
While one of the cloud’s greatest selling points has long been its cost-effectiveness in comparison to on-premise hardware, the reality is a little more complicated. Cloud databases can absolutely save you money—as long as you know exactly what you’re paying for. If that’s not clear, you run the risk of incurring charges for usage and storage without even knowing it until the bill comes due. For more info, check out our white paper “The Complete Guide to Optimizing Cloud Data Spend.”
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Lock-In risks
Vendor lock-in has become a key driver for the mass migration away from Oracle to more flexible alternatives like Postgres. The point of the cloud is to have a database that works for you, with all the freedom and malleability the technology allows. That’s why you need to carefully examine the contract you’ll be signing with your provider. Will they limit your ability to innovate with third party tools? How much control do you have over your own data? If you end up dealing with lock-in, your ability to grow and evolve could be severely restricted from day one.
Experience the full power of Postgres in the cloud
Enterprises that invest in cloud Postgres do so because they recognize Postgres’ sterling reputation and innovative potential as the most transformative open source technology since Linux. In order to make the most of your investment, however, you must work to mitigate the major deployment risks we’ve discussed.
As we explain over the course of “Choosing the Right Postgres Vendor in the Cloud,” the best way to do so is with a fully managed cloud Postgres solution. Fully managed Postgres in the cloud allows you to focus on your most strategic and innovative initiatives, while the operational framework of your database is managed by your provider. With EDB, that means you’re supported around the clock by those who know Postgres inside and out—the builders.
Overcome unnecessary hurdles and seize on the true potential of Postgres and the cloud with a fully managed database solution.
Want to learn more tricks to assess different cloud providers? Check out the full webinar on our website!
To see what cloud Postgres is truly capable of, test drive EDB BigAnimal, our fully managed cloud Postgres database.