Your databases are the heart of your organization containing the keys to sales, production, and all of your business-critical processes.

However, the unfortunate truth is many databases are woefully under-managed for a variety of reasons — cost, skill gaps, lack of internal resource. Whatever the explanation, your Oracle, SQL Server, or NoSQL databases are too important to overlook.

So for 2018, we’re making it our goal to help you get your databases the attention they need with some resolutions to get you on the right track:

Stop Reacting, Get Proactive with Automation

As the saying goes, the best defense is a strong offense. Whether you’re launching new database projects or maintaining your existing databases, managing databases can quickly become overwhelming. Dealing with problems as they pop up, is not sustainable for anyone. It’s a never-ending, uphill battle that wastes your time and the time of your IT team.

You need to be regularly monitoring your databases, and the most efficient way to accomplish this is through automation. Monitoring should not be a one-off manual process, it should be ongoing so that any potential issues are caught before they become disasters.

And don’t just check in on your databases, review your processes too. Routinely performing database management assessments will increase the predictability of future project work and enhance your return on investment by optimizing the performance of your databases.

Find the Right Cloud for You

As applications and infrastructure are heading to the cloud, the databases are migrating as well; there’s no denying it, but while the move to the cloud may be unavoidable, that shouldn’t mean your company doesn’t control the migration. Being deliberate while moving your data to the cloud can save you time and money in the long run.

While the majority of cloud users are employing a public cloud option (i.e. AWS), some more regulated data (i.e. healthcare and financial) may require a private solution. That’s why many companies are employing a hybrid architecture, bridging private, public, and on-premise data solutions.

According to RightScale’s 2017 State of the Cloud Report, 58 percent of enterprises now have a hybrid cloud architecture, but the key to success is finding the right cloud architecture for your databases. By assessing your database requirements you can find the right cloud solution for your data. You can learn more about how many companies are managing their databases with hybrid cloud in this complimentary eBook or listen in on our recent webinar. 

Optimize Your Team

Your database administrator's ability to quickly and effectively manage change is critical. So it goes without saying that it’s critical you have the right team member for the task. Sadly with many small and medium-sized businesses, the task often falls to the “best option” rather than someone who is truly qualified to not only manage your databases, but optimize them for peak performance.

For many companies having an in-house DBA simply doesn’t make sense. Managed service providers can help businesses fill this gap with remote DBA services for less than the cost of another full time employee. A strong MSP partner serves as an extension of your team to closely monitor your databases (such as Oracle, SQL Server, NoSQL, etc.) to keep them running smoothly and identify any potentials for improvement.

Get started finding the right database management solutions for your company today with a free 15-minute consultation.