At EDB, we’ve always been passionate about sharing our deep expertise with the global open-source community. In our recent webinar, Database Management Dilemmas, we explored some of the most pressing issues facing today’s enterprises as they deal with the ever-increasing complexity of databases.
In this informative and insightful webinar, EDB Senior Product Manager Natalia Wojcik, and EDB Product Manager Ivory Ibuaka discuss the common dilemmas businesses face in database management. With the rise of data proliferation, organizations are now managing vast amounts of data across multiple locations, leading to challenges like data silos, security risks, and even burnout among database professionals. If you’re looking for insights on potential solutions, the evolving roles within database management, and how enterprises can tackle these issues head-on, this webinar is for you.
Keep reading for an overview of the key insights from this thought-provoking session and what they mean for your organization.
The Database Management Challenge
As Ivory points out at the beginning of the webinar, developers rarely think about their databases unless there’s an issue. This reactive approach to database management is becoming increasingly unsustainable as organizations scale.
Data has been likened to the oil of the digital economy—an invaluable resource that powers everything we do. But, just like crude oil, it needs to be refined and processed before it is truly useful. In today’s enterprise environment, data is spread across multiple systems and geographies, creating silos and sprawl. Each team, or even each microservice, can end up with its own database, which leads to massive operational inefficiencies, security vulnerabilities, and availability issues.
Ivory explains, “What starts as a reasonable database solution can quickly spiral out of control into a massive security or availability failure.” For businesses already dealing with hundreds—or even thousands—of databases, this sprawl creates unnecessary complexity and significantly increases the risk of mistakes or data breaches.
Database as a Service (DBaaS)
One of the most popular approaches to solving database sprawl is Database as a Service (DBaaS). In theory, DBaaS offers a fully managed solution that lets companies offload the burden of database maintenance to a third party.
Yet DBaaS isn’t a cure-all, as Natalia points out. “You can reduce costs, scale up quickly, and have easy management. What could go wrong? On the other hand, you still have a lot of shared responsibility. You're still responsible for architecting, designing, configuring, tuning, and optimizing.”
While DBaaS may help with some challenges, it introduces new risks—particularly in terms of shared responsibilities. Even with a managed service, companies still need to stay deeply involved in decision-making around architecture, optimization, and security.
The Developer Dilemma: Flexibility vs. Sprawl
Another popular trend is the developer-centric approach, where developers are given more control over database technology choices. According to the latest research, nearly 68% of database technology decisions are now made by engineers and architects. While this makes sense in many ways—developers are closest to the code, after all—it also exacerbates database sprawl.
As Natalia explained, developers are not a monolithic group. Everyone has different preferences, and everyone wants to use the latest and greatest technologies. This often leads to a proliferation of databases, languages, and tools within an organization, each optimized for specific use cases but creating a tangled web of systems that are difficult to manage and secure.
This is where the cloud-native movement comes into play. Cloud-native architectures give every microservice or team its own database, which can seem like an ideal solution for flexibility and scalability. But again, we run into the same problem: data sprawl. The more databases you have, the harder it becomes to ensure consistency, security, and performance across the board.
Evolving Roles and Growing Complexity
As databases grow in number and complexity, the roles responsible for managing them are evolving. Traditionally, this was the domain of database administrators (DBAs), but now we’re seeing platform engineers and site reliability engineers (SREs) stepping into the mix. These new roles bring fresh perspectives and skills, focusing on automation, performance optimization, and system reliability.
However, as Ivory pointed out, the underlying challenges remain the same. Old threats like vendor lock-ins and security risks are still here. And with so many different teams managing different systems, the risk of mistakes increases exponentially. The more databases and tools you have, the more likely it is that someone, somewhere, will drop the ball—leading to outages, breaches, or worse.
Practical Solutions
So, what’s the solution? While there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, Natalia and Ivory offered some practical advice during the webinar. One of the most important takeaways? Establish clear policies. Without consistent policies across the organization, you will end up with a patchwork of tools and databases that are difficult to manage, secure, and optimize.
Another key consideration is tool flexibility. As your organization adopts new databases and technologies, make sure they can be used across multiple teams and departments. The more siloed your tools are, the harder it becomes to manage your data holistically.
Finally, pay attention to your people. With database professionals increasingly tasked with managing sprawling environments, burnout is a real risk. Ensuring that your team has the resources and support they need will help prevent costly mistakes and ensure that your data stays secure, available, and valuable.
Looking Forward
At EDB, we’re committed to helping enterprises overcome these database management dilemmas. We’ve seen firsthand how modern database environments can spiral into complexity and inefficiency.
If you missed the Database Management Dilemmas webinar, we highly recommend watching the recording and reaching out to EDB for more information. It’s packed with actionable insights and expert advice that can help you navigate the complexities of modern database management.