Cloud technology has become very popular lately. There are so many new services being provided over this medium. Examples are software as a service (SaaS), entertainment and even databases as a service. One of these services has a very good chance of becoming permanently accepted into the IT industry as a reliable Cloud offering. This is databases as a service.
Industry influencers certainly agree that this is an innovative use of the Cloud technology. An example of one of these is Larry Ellison, the Chief Technology Officer and Executive Chairman at Oracle. He indicated that database software is the main product of his company and he intends to leverage Cloud technology to make databases as a service one of their leading products too. What exactly is a database as a service? Read on to find out.
Explore Databases as a Service
Fondly abbreviated as DBaaS, this is where database capability is made available through Cloud technology. All that users have to do is log on to the Cloud and they can access high quality database services. The technology makes it such that a user can access two instances of the database. These are:
- The schema
- A complete, dedicated database
The schema is literally a slice of a database. If the user wants to perform some light database processing, this is the instance that they will access. On the other hand, if they want to perform heavy processing, they can use the DBaaS to gain access to a full, functional database. Moreover, Cloud technology can be leveraged such that the DBaaS can be provided for an organization. The employees can access database solutions that are tailor-made for their organization. If it is executed well, databases as a service could have significant advantages for organizations today.
Potential Benefits of using DBaaS
There are a number of benefits that an organization could enjoy by using DBaaS instead of traditional database software solutions. One of these is cost. It is much more affordable to subscribe to a Cloud-based database service than it is to buy and maintain in–house database software. Also, remote DBA experts can enjoy some extra performance advantages as a result of using database software that is hosted in the Cloud. These include high speeds and limitless scalability. DBaaS is also very easy to deploy in your organization. Moreover, the service is always being updated with new capabilities for you. Thanks to these features and benefits, databases as a Cloud service are an industry that is rising very fast. Analysts indicate that its value could grow from $1 billion today to $14 billion in 3 years.
How is this new Cloud Service Being Implemented?
Despite offering many new amazing solutions, corporations are not jumping on the DBaaS bandwagon just yet. Due to the sensitive nature of business information, businesses are using phases to implement DBaaS. This means that some specific databases will remain in the business premises while others will be moved to the Cloud.
The databases that are critical to the business will remain held in their physical datacenters. Examples of these are the customer accounts database of a bank or the merchandise database of a discount store. Since these are highly critical to the overall mission of the organization, they will be retained in the premises while other less critical databases can be moved to the Cloud. One of the database industry leaders who supports this strategy is Andy Mendelsohn, the Executive VP at Oracle who handles Database Server Technologies.
A modern organization literally has thousands of databases. Only a few of these are mission-critical. The rest can be deployed on the DBaaS service. Some of the databases that can comfortably be moved to the Cloud are those that are used to develop and test business applications. Since using the Cloud is much more affordable than using in-house software to hold databases, a business can save on costs by moving the databases that are not critical to the Cloud.
One of the technologies that helps to make this possible is virtualization. This is a technology that is used to create virtual machines (VMs). These machines make it possible for one server to hold very many virtual ones. In this way, databases can be virtually consolidated. For example, instead of having 5,000 databases running on 5,000 different servers, you can run them on 50 servers using virtual consolidation. Oracle is one of the companies that is leveraging this concept in their new technology.
The Oracle Multitenant
The latest version of the Oracle database software is known as Oracle Database 12c. It features an architecture know as Oracle Multitenant. This feature allows developers to create databases that are pluggable. They can effectively create 252 of these and run them in one container database. In addition to that, these databases can all be administered from that container. Database administrators (DBAs) can perform tasks, such as upgrading, backing up and patching at the container level. The Oracle Multitenant is built such that it has efficiencies thatallow you to host up to 5 times more databases in a single virtual server. This results in major savings in hardware, thanks to the consolidation of your servers. Moreover, an organization is able to save on the cost of labor as well.
Conclusion
Databases can now be provided as a service on the Cloud. This has many advantages for organizations. The shift to Cloud technology has had a major impact on today’s IT environment. Databases as a service (DBaaS) is one of these impacts and Oracle corporation is making strategic moves to maximize on this technology.
