Whenever I hear the word database, I picture a mega-sized Oracle system at the back of a building collecting and storing our data. But if only were databases that simple! 

Companies invest a ton of money in their hardware setup—servers, storage, database systems, networking equipment, and so on. But as enterprises started expanding, the rate at which their infrastructure scaled could not meet the growing customer data needs and demands. Companies then realized that even with databases, it was not enough to keep adding more systems to the hardware and expanding on premises, but it was also crucial to invest in “Anything as a service” (XaaS) offerings.

XaaS is a general term used to describe the category of software, tools, products, and services that are available on cloud platforms. These offerings are delivered “as a service” using the internet.

Databases now are readily being offered as a service (three cheers for cloud computing!) by some of the largest tech giants such as Amazon Relational Database Service, Azure SQL Database, Google Cloud Firestore, and IBM Db2, as well as by on-premises database management system providers. 

But what makes database as a service (DBaaS) so popular?

Why is everyone talking about DBaaS?

Automating repetitive tasks such as scaling, monitoring, observability, upgrades, and security allows business users to focus on other tasks instead of managing the database manually. These tasks are managed by the cloud vendor, and a database administrator (DBA) can use a dashboard or self-service model to manage the DBaaS offering.

The Database as a Service (DBaaS) category on G2 saw a significant growth of 92.73% YoY. One of the key reasons for the growth of DBaaS is the explosive growth of data that we have observed over the last year. The pandemic created strong data growth (WFH, e-learning, etc.), however,  there is a lack of clear understanding as to how to manage all this data. This is where DBaaS steps in. Instead of purchasing expensive IT equipment (along with room space, electricity, water, among other data center infrastructure costs) to store and manage huge databases, firms are now looking at DBaaS solution providers to manage their databases at a fraction of the cost. Since it is subscription based, companies can pay for only the services they have subscribed to and scale only when necessary. This provides companies a great way to manage their databases since they have outsourced, dedicated professionals handling it.

The biggest advantage of using a DBaaS solution is that users can opt for the offering that best suits their database needs. This can be a single offering or multiple database offering or be partially or fully managed. 

Some of the examples of different databases that are available as a service offering include relational databases, key value databases, columnar databases, document databases, graph databases, and time series databases.  

Customer’s role in DBaaS

With manual tasks out of the picture, the customer does not need to worry about hardware or logistics. Instead, the focus can be diverted to designing and developing applications that align with the DBaaS, managing user access, or modeling different data.

Latest innovations in the DBaaS space

Innovations in DBaaS are being seen across all verticals. Here are G2’s top picks:

• In October 2021, Couchbase, a leading database provider announced their Couchbase Capella hosted DBaaS offering on AWS. It is a fully-managed offering that provides performance at scale for enterprise applications.
• In October 2021, CockroachDB announced that they now offer serverless DBaaS.
• In September 2021, Pure Storage announced Portworx Data Services, a DBaaS offering for Kubernetes environments allowing users to provision databases with only one click.
• In December 2020, Oracle announced the launch of a DbaaS offering, a cloud-based MySQL database service. The DBaaS was also integrated with an analytics engine focused on performing business tasks within the same system to support analyst teams within organizations.

G2 predicts two major DBaaS trends

One of the biggest trends G2 expects to see in the IT infrastructure landscape is the accelerated adoption of DBaaS. With databases becoming bigger and more complex, DBaaS offers an efficient way to manage them.

When we apply modernization concepts to IT infrastructure, we get a strategic business plan to move away from aging legacy infrastructure in favor of innovative solutions and digital transformation. As companies begin to explore the cloud, they still expect the quality, performance, and efficiency of on-premises systems. DBaaS is expected to play a big role in achieving these goals of IT modernization by efficiently and effectively managing huge databases. 

Another key trend we expect to see is an increase in DBaaS integrations with different types of software. For example, Oracle does not limit their service to DBaaS but also provides a fully integrated MySQL Analytics Engine with the cloud offering. In another example, Pure Storage is now offering a DBaaS platform, especially for Kubernetes.

But this trend gives rise to a question: what is the relevance of these integrations?

The idea behind offering such an integrated solution is to provide more functionality to the user, and more importantly, to reduce dependency on multiple software. For example, Oracle DBaaS offerings allow users to run extensive and deep analytical queries directly with MySQL databases, providing a complete package, thus eliminating the need for other analytical tools such as an extract, transform and load (ETL) tool, or expensive data integration software. 

Another example is the AWS DBaaS offering, which offers customers more than 15 different types of purpose-built engines to support numerous data models including but not limited to, key-value, document, columnar, time-series, graph, and relational. Also, Pure Storages’ PortWorx Data Services allow users to manage numerous data services (think databases, microservices, data pipelines, AI/ML pipelines, and so much more) all while using the DBaaS offering.

Customers now have a complete package and no longer have to depend on disparate software for their needs. 

As DBaaS grows, how will on-premises vendors cope? 

Change is the only constant. As more customers look to the cloud to support their database requirements, on-premises database providers feel an imminent threat. However, it is no easy feat to just “move databases to the cloud”. We are talking about systems and relationships that have stayed strong for many years, storing data and ensuring business continuity. The IT infrastructure landscape is so deeply integrated with on-premises architecture that moving to the cloud could be a bigger hassle than staying on-premises. 

Leveraging this confidence with the installed base, several on-premises vendors are now offering DBaaS offerings in line with their on-premises offerings. For example, Oracle offers Oracle Database Cloud Service, Amazon offers Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), IBM offers IBM Compose for PostgreSQL and IBM Compose for MongoDB, and many more.

The biggest names in the traditional database industry know that DBaaS is here to stay. They do not aim to compete against the tide, but their focus is to swim with it. Companies that have a strong installed base of databases can opt for the related DBaaS offerings from the same vendor to ensure that there is a smooth transition to the cloud. In addition, several companies are deeply integrated with vendor lock-ins, making it difficult to break away from the monolithic architecture and opt for a new one.

What’s next for DBaaS?

As data continues to grow, companies are going to jump onto the “information” bandwagon. Ensuring that data is stored safely and securely, is accessible on demand, scalable when required, and ingestible by different software will be a necessity in the future. DBaaS is the vessel that will hold all this together.